


To Build a Better World

by asocialconstruct



Series: To Build a Better World [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU Hydra Wins, Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Depression, Drug Use, HYDRA Husbands, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Medical Procedures, Medical Trauma, POV Sam Wilson, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Rape, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, Victim Blaming, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-08-19
Packaged: 2018-04-09 18:01:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 14
Words: 37,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4358828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asocialconstruct/pseuds/asocialconstruct
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt: Project Insight crashes and burns, but HYDRA had a dozen backup plans and a ways down the road, one of them works. Steve and Sam have found Bucky and they’ve been working together, but then suddenly HYDRA’s in charge of the entire world and Bucky and Sam (and Steve?) are taken captive. </p><p>--</p><p>Any day now—any second—Bucky and Steve are going to come crashing through a wall of squid Nazis, eight feet tall, shield in hand and guns blazing.  Sam’s going to punch in some faces until his hands hurt, throw off some amazing one liners, and they’re going to ride into the sunset.</p><p>While eating steak.</p><p>It’ll be great.</p><p>Except that Steve’s dead and Bucky might as well be, and nobody’s coming for Sam.</p><p>--</p><p>I promise this has a happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Despite All Diplomacy

**Author's Note:**

> thank you [dsudis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis), [linguamortua](http://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua) and [scappodaqui](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scappodaqui/pseuds/Scappodaqui) for letting me throw unedited chunks of this at you, your feedback was super helpful! <3 <3 <3
> 
> \--
> 
> I've tried to tag for what I can think of, but in general, consider this a choose not to warn experience. Ask me on [tumblr](http://a-social-construct.tumblr.com/) if you need to know about anything specific.
> 
> Yes I'm aware of the Hydra is not Nazis debate. I don't think Sam cares.
> 
> Yes (almost) all the chapter titles are Pierce quotes.

It’s a stupid fantasy and Sam knows it, but it keeps him doing his exercises. Gives him a reason to not skip leg day in this bare little box, anyway. It’s a little too romance novel and he knows it, but it’s not like there’s anyone around to judge it.

Any day now—any second—Bucky and Steve are going to come crashing through a wall of squid Nazis, eight feet tall, shield in hand and guns blazing. Sam’s going to punch in some faces until his hands hurt, throw off some amazing one liners, and they’re going to ride into the sunset to a world that makes some goddamn sense. Then they’re going to have wall-smashingly, couch-breakingly amazing sex and sleep in a real motherfucking bed for about ten thousand years.

While eating steak.

It’ll be great.

Riley said they could make their own luck. And, well, Sam’s luck was never good and neither was Riley’s but they lived through most of it. Sam does his pushups and tries not to think about that. Because Steve’s dead and Bucky might as well be, and nobody’s coming for Sam.

* * *

Sam paces the three steps each way of his bare little cell until he's got it memorized, never so grateful for SERE training. At the time it felt like precious hours away from falling out of the sky with the rest of the dumbshit PJ trainees, but now it feels like it was the only course worth taking. God help him that he needs it now.

He eats his three bland meals a day as soon as they get shoved through the slot in the door and does his yoga and doesn't care if Hydra watches him do leg day because his cardio might go to shit in this little cell but he's not going to drop muscle mass if he can help it.

Except that he can't help it, because he does drop muscle and weight both. He realizes they're giving him high-volume, low-caloric load mush about two weeks in. They're trying to give him pellagra, maybe, or protein poisoning, he can't even tell what's in the mush they put through the door. His gums are going soft without a toothbrush or the right vitamins and he wonders if anyone would even know if he went on hungerstrike.

Or at least, he thinks he figures out the food two weeks in, because the light never changes and he doesn't sleep even with a shirt or arm thrown over his eyes. He starts hallucinating the ceiling dropping down on him around week three, and he doesn't go on hungerstrike because he can't stand the thought of starving to death in this little windowless coffin. He sleeps sitting up after that.

Maybe Hydra is watching him do ab day, but he'd never be able to tell because he can't find a pinhole for a camera or any imperfection on the smooth cell walls and he drives himself crazy looking for a seam around the sink and toilet. He tears his nails trying to catch around the seam of the blank door and screams himself hoarse and doesn't skip leg day because what the hell else is he supposed to do.

* * *

Sam mixes up them sometimes in his dreams, Riley and Steve and Bucky. Riley with his wings torn off and Bucky's arm, Steve falling out of the sky while Sam spins after him. Bucky with the shield and Steve stalking after them with dead eyes and a metal arm.

* * *

This is torture, Sam reminds himself when he starts losing track of his own thoughts. Solitary confinement, sleep dep and starvation, that’s torture. There are no prisoners with Hydra, but maybe they changed the rules when they took over.

He cries for his mother somewhere around the one month mark, and he hopes she thinks he's dead because this would break her heart. He thinks that he should have died in the air with Riley instead of living to get trapped in this claustrophobic box, and then hates himself for wanting to abandon Steve and Bucky.

This is torture, and he reminds himself of that over and over because it gives him something to think about besides what they must be doing to Bucky or his sisters. They're torturing him, and it has to be for a reason, he thinks selfishly, so if he can just keep from cracking he can keep them from winning even if he never sees the sky again.

Or maybe they just forgot about him and left the lights on. He sings until he's hoarse and then he sings until he starts forgetting the words. Didn't make it sugar, playing by the rules.

* * *

He wakes up from the dreams so cold sometimes he thinks it's him coming out of cryo, so certain he can hear screams echoing through the walls he holds his breath listening until his pulse drowns it all out. There's a sharp chemical smell some nights, antiseptic and electrical fire and gunpowder and it's so real he knows he's losing it because it's the way his hands smelled the day Riley died and when he gets his breathing under control all he can smell is his own unwashed body.

* * *

The door opens around the two month mark, and Sam hates himself for the brief flicker of hope that it really is Steve and Bucky because of course it isn't. The hallway behind Rumlow is dark and blank before the door closes, and Sam sits there with his back to the wall and elbows on his knees trying to control the rush of adrenaline shaking his nerves. Steve's dead and Bucky might as well be and it turns out that someone was coming for Sam after all.

“The fuck do you want?” Sam says without getting up. His voice hurts, sounds unnaturally loud in the claustrophobic little room.

“Think you know what I want, Wilson.” Rumlow takes a step towards him and Sam stands, because yeah, it's clear enough how this is going to go but he doesn't have to make it easy. They haven't bothered interrogating him and this is clearly not an interrogation, and Sam tries not to think about why.

“Looks like you got enough of an ass kicking last time,” Sam says past the knot in his throat. If Rumlow thinks he's getting payback for the building that fell on him Sam doesn't care to find out what he's got in mind, but it looks like he's going to anyway.

“Your friends put up a pretty good fight without you,” Rumlow says conversationally, circling to Sam's left. Sam puts his shoulders back and circles with him, unwilling to get caught in a corner with no window to jump out of this time. “But the band of merry men didn't last very long after Captain Robinhood gave up the ghost,” Rumlow says, and swings at Sam's face.

Sam sidesteps it, his reflexes shitty and his pulse kicking up. This is just the warm up act, he can see it in Rumlow's face. He dodges another punch to the stomach, feet unsteady under him.

“Come on, you fucking pussy, hit me,” Rumlow laughs, like this is some kind of fucking game and not Sam's life. “Or you chairforce fags spend too much time jerking it to learn how to punch?”

Sam ducks under Rumlow's next swing and comes up with a one two into the bastard's stomach and nose, sending him staggering back a step. Rumlow smiles at him through bloody teeth and comes after him, and this time there's no dodging it, Sam blocks and it shakes his arm down to the shoulder.

Pushups and leg day were not enough for this, he's panting and Rumlow circles him like a feral dog, snapping at his heels. They'd be a match—they were a match—if Sam were in good form but there's a reason this is coming two months in and the uppercut to his jaw is why.

The way Rumlow's head snaps back when Sam returns the favor is satisfying but it doesn't last. Rumlow shakes it off, working his jaw back into socket and clearly done with fucking around.

He spits blood at Sam and unclips a little black rod from his belt, snapping it out and stalking Sam along the wall. And Christ, Sam knows what that is without having to see it on and he dances back until Rumlow swings it at him and over extends.

Sam tackles him for the stun baton and they go ass over tea kettle across the floor, but Rumlow's got the leverage and shoes and he knees Sam in the balls so hard his head cracks against the wall. Rumlow staggers to his feet and hits Sam with it off twice in the jaw before he can get his knees under him, and once with it on when he pushes himself up.

He watched a kid die in Afghanistan, a British NATO kid who lived through the IED but thrashed to death in a seizure during evac while Sam tried to hang onto him midair, and this feels like that, like there's a hole in him wired to a car battery. Sam bites through his tongue and doesn't realize it until he's panting face down in blood on the floor, Rumlow's knee in his back, and then it's happening.

And God it hurts, it hurts worse than the shrapnel that took out Riley and left Sam spinning uselessly miles out of reach, because that was hot and blinding and this is dull and sick and he can do even less about it. Sam thrashes under him and Rumlow digs fingers in his hair, cracking his face into the floor until Sam feels something break, one eye going dark and the other going white with pain.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair and that’s all his mind can catch on, because this isn’t supposed to be happening. They put him in a box for two months and starved him and Steve's dead and it's not fucking _fair_. It hurts and it's not fair because it doesn't hurt enough that he can black out from it and just escape like he did instead of watching Riley land.

Rumlow laughs in his ear and the scratchy wool of his undershirt hurts until it rides up so that Sam can feel Rumlow's skin on his and he wishes for it back. Sam thrashes and screams until he chokes on blood and his hands spasm from pain and the stun baton and exhaustion and it's over.

* * *

It’s—he’s fine.

He’s going to be fine. Which is the same as fine. It only hurts, and he’s been hurt worse before. It’s fine. Minor facial contusion, maybe a fracture. Some abrasions. Minor tearing. Barely any bleeding, hardly any broken bones. It’s barely anything.

It’s fine.

He’s fine. He can make his own luck, even though his luck has always been pretty shitty.

 


	2. Holding Action

“Nice weather today,” Rumlow says after the next time, and “Supposed to be clear skies all weekend,” the time after, and that's how Sam learns to tell days apart again.

The door never opens at the same time, and that's part of it, making him wait on edge in the bright light like he's imagined it until they're even odds who gets the drop on who except that Sam doesn't get to sleep or eat real food or shower between because when did Hydra ever like a fair fight. He tries to shut Rumlow out and pick up details about anything outside his bare little cell at the same time, but Rumlow kicks him in the teeth and jerks him off when he notices Sam stops paying attention to the weather report.

He starts jerking himself off every morning after that, so that he can't get it up again by the time Rumlow fucks him. Never thought he'd be so glad to be pushing the far side of thirty. He thinks about Steve and Bucky the first time, and then makes himself stop because Steve and Bucky are a short path to the filthy shit Rumlow pants in his ear about how tight Steve's ass was and how good Bucky gave head. Which is true, but he can't take mixing up what he thinks he remembers with what Rumlow tells him he'd done to Steve and Bucky and God he misses them but he can't let himself think about them.

So Sam manages it without thinking about much at all until it becomes mechanical, just another set of exercises to get through before pushups. Just another part of his routine along with leg day and rape.

Sam mixes up them sometimes in his dreams, Rumlow and Steve and Bucky. Bucky jerking him off with his metal hand while Sam screams himself hoarse against the floor, Steve pinned down and Sam fucking him while he cries.

Marvin Gaye and hymns and Run DMC blur together in his head when he tries to sing himself back to sleep in the bright light, and Sam presses his broken cheek to the cool floor and reminds himself that this is torture. Steve is dead and Bucky probably is and no one is coming for Sam. It's torture and it's meant to break him so he won't.

He breaks Rumlow's nose once, and that's how he finds out how much it hurts to give head with a broken cheekbone and Rumlow finds out how much it hurts to almost get his dick bitten off. No one gets off after that and Sam loses a couple hours passed out on the floor but he counts it as a win anyway.

* * *

Then the routine changes. Rumlow opens the door and just snaps his fingers at Sam, like that’s supposed to mean something. He’s got a little first aid bag in his hand, and Sam’s sure it can’t mean anything good. Sam stands with his back to the wall and keeps his hands down this time, because there’s no winning. There’s no winning, but he can at least deny Rumlow the satisfaction of being scared of him til he's close enough to swing at.

“Come on, Wilson, don’t got all day,” Rumlow says, and walks away from the open door without waiting to see if Sam follows.

And he does, because—Christ, the door’s open. Even if it’s a trap, Sam scrambles out like his ass is on fire, just to figure out where he is and look at something besides the same four walls.

The halls are painted a dark gray and he can't hardly see anything after the unending bright light of the cell and that's probably the point. There's not a chance of bolting for it, some tall asshole with a gun shoving him after Rumlow before Sam even gets a look down the corridor the opposite direction. It's somehow even more claustrophobic than his cell because it's packed with people and Sam finds himself sticking close to Rumlow because he's familiar and not staring at Sam and Sam hates himself and Rumlow both for it.

Everyone else has shoes on and Sam's barefoot and that's when it hits him that this really is the end of the world, because this is exactly what Avengers HQ looked like before Hydra took over and it's really only the insignia on the uniforms that looks any different, except Sam's stumbling through the halls with two months of beard and no shoes and everyone's looking at him like a zoo animal. Even the scuff marks on the gray linoleum are the same, and Sam stumbles over his own feet trying to keep up until he falters at the sight of Rumlow waiting for him in front of a door and way too many squid Nazis with guns waiting with him.

Sam's never been more painfully aware of being the only black man in a room in his life.

Rumlow makes an impatient noise when Sam stops in the hallway, as if Sam would walk into that coffee klatsch under his own power. It's a firing squad or a gang rape and he's not walking into either willingly. There's two women and two men besides Rumlow and the guy behind Sam, and somehow the women shake him more than anything else because Hydra's so normal they're equal opportunity.

Rumlow walks back to drag him bodily by the arm, the guy with the gun jabbing it into Sam's kidneys. He fights them kicking the whole way down until he gets a look in the door and realizes that the firing squad isn't there for him.

Because it's for—Bucky. Alive.

Mostly.

Bleeding from a scalp wound and breathing heavily with his back against the far wall, blood spattered around the room and up his bare arms. The room smells like it, blood and ozone under it because they've used the stun batons on Bucky, he can see the electrical burns chased down Bucky's bare torso now that he knows to look for it. Bucky's got blisters under the blood streaked down his chest, and long jagged cuts across his chest and arms like he got dragged across broken glass or jagged metal, Sam can't tell from this distance.

Torn up to hell, and he clearly doesn't know Sam from Rumlow or any other Hydra asshole any more than he did the day Steve and Sam first found him. Sam's torn nails dig into his palms with how bad he wants to make all these assholes pay for what they've done to Bucky again, and Bucky's attention zeros right in on Sam like he's the threat.

Sam glares at Rumlow, because this is not how this is supposed to go. This is not how Sam's romance novel ends, watching Steve and Bucky both bleed out in front of him.

“You're a medic,” Rumlow says, tossing the bag at Bucky’s feet. Bucky jerks away from the bag, crazed eyes flicking back and forth between Sam and Rumlow like a trapped animal. “Patch him up.”

Bucky's here, and alive, and they can get out of this together. Punch out some Nazis, ride off into the sunset, and figure out why everyone else has taken their sweet damn time with the rescue. Great plan.

Okay.

Sam can do this. Bucky needs him, Bucky will know him, and Bucky probably won't put him through the wall. These things we do that others may live. If he can get close enough, remind Bucky who he is, Bucky'll remember him and they can get the fuck out of here together. Sam can do this.

Sam licks his lips and takes a step towards Bucky, hands and body language open. Bucky shifts against the wall, tracking Sam like he's got a gun in his hands instead of shit all.

“It's okay, we're okay,” Sam says. “You're okay, Bucky, it's just me, you know me.”

“I’d be careful, if I were you,” Rumlow says from the door, hand on his gun and eyes on Bucky. “He painted the walls with the last three techs to put stitches in him.”

“Not helping,” Sam breathes over his shoulder without taking his eyes off Bucky.

Bucky watches him, and it's like his first days back all over again. Wary, ready to bolt, metal fingers flexing. He looks terrible, besides the burns and the cuts; he looks like he hasn't slept in days and Sam can smell him across the room, sweat and gunpowder and blood. As if Sam smells any better, going on three months without a shower or toothbrush. They're a pair, dirty and gaunt as lost kittens.

“It's just Sam, Bucky, I'm not going to hurt you,” Sam says, willing his voice steady and trying to keep Bucky's attention on him. “It's just me, we're okay.”

Bucky takes two breaths and then he's moving, bolting for Sam and suddenly there's yelling and guns being brought up and Sam's right in the fucking middle of it.

“We're cool, be cool,” Sam yells, and his voice breaks on it because things are definitely not cool. Bucky pulls up short, just in arm's reach of Sam and the silence is shockingly loud. Bucky swings his head from side to side, like he's trying to see Sam from a better angle, keeping Rumlow and the rest in his peripheral.

“Put the gun down,” Sam says over his shoulder to Rumlow. And Christ, they're all pointing at him and Bucky like fish in a barrel. Bucky might still take a bullet or eight and live through it, but Sam certainly won't. “Put the fucking guns down,” Sam says again, edge of hysteria in his voice, and this time they listen. He feels the shift more than he sees it, attention on Bucky coiled tight and waiting.

Bucky grabs at him, yanking Sam by the shirt, and Sam scrambles to get away from certain fucking death before he realizes Bucky's pulled him into a bearhug and this is not how Sam wanted this reunion to go. Bucky's worse up close, blood still flowing from the bigger cuts and even Bucky and Steve can't keep walking after losing enough blood.

Sam pats his sticky, sweaty back at an awkward angle, Bucky rubbing his bloody face on Sam's shoulder.

“For fuck's sake,” Sam hears someone mutter, Rumlow or one of his backup dancers.

“It's ok, I got you, I got you,” Sam says and tries to ignore them. He gets Bucky and himself to the floor somehow, because he's high off the adrenaline and he needs to make sure Bucky's okay before anything else. It has to hurt, some of the electrical burns blistered and Sam's shirt rubbed with blood and grime, but Bucky just leans into him with one wary eye on the door.

Bucky watches him closely as he gets the med bag open, attention half on Sam and half on Rumlow and the rest in the doorway. The med bag is fucking pathetic. A suture kit, some alcohol wipes and that's it. Not even gloves, and even if he's pretty sure Bucky's clean or else Sam's already got anything he has, it makes him uneasy because of what it says about how fucking careless this all is. Like they don't give a fuck what happens to Bucky beyond getting him up and moving again and maybe not even that, like Bucky's disposable.

And if Sam thinks about it, which he doesn't particularly want to, he's more likely to pick up something from Rumlow than Bucky.

“You okay, Bucky?” Sam asks as he gets the hemostat threaded. Doesn't really expect an answer, but it doesn't hurt to ask. Bucky obliges expectations, eerily quiet with his jaw working like he's going to say something.

Then it's time to see if Sam's going to paint the walls too. He puts a hand on Bucky's arm, rubs with his thumb and ducks his head to look Bucky in the eye. Bucky flicks eyes on him but his attention's clearly not on Sam. His pulse is thready and fast under Sam's hand, skin clammy with shock or pain. “I'm not going to hurt you, okay, Buck? I'm just gonna clean off around these cuts, and then I'm going to give you some stitches. Okay?”

Someone shifts in the corridor and Bucky's attention snaps away, gone rigid at the sound of boots creaking on the linoleum as their audience gets restless. Sam gives his arm a little squeeze to bring him back. “Buck. Hey. I'm going to clean up your cuts and it's going to sting, okay? I need some help here, Bucky.”

Bucky glances at him, just a flicker, and nods tightly. Sam takes a deep breath. Rolls his shoulders to loosen up, because he's still got to get over the main hurdle. Bucky hisses at the first sting of the alcohol wipe, but barely, all his attention on the door, and Sam doesn't want to think about Rumlow's eyes on his back.

Sam blows out a breath and narrates what he's doing, stupid sweet nothings with Bucky's name every third word as he tries to clean around the cuts and make sure he's not sewing any shrapnel into Bucky's chest. Bucky doesn't seem to register it, but it helps remind Sam he's doing this for a reason and it can't hurt. It should be easier without gunfire and shit exploding, but the audience doesn't help and neither does the way Bucky's metal hand spasms on Sam's thigh when Sam puts the needle in him the first time.

There's no gauze or anything to staunch the blood, so Sam strips out of his shirt to wipe his hands when his bloody fingers slip on the hemostat. His fingers barely fit in the blunt little scissors, and Bucky's not going to be winning any swimsuit contests with Sam's sloppy cross stitch in him.

“I'm gonna need another suture kit,” Sam says when the thread's almost gone. He clips off one knot and starts the other, not following Bucky's eyes to see if the murmuring in the corridor means he's going to get it or just a baton to the back of the head. Worst med-surg team ever.

They kick the suture kit across the floor and Sam catches it one handed so he doesn't have to stop touching Bucky. “He needs antibiotics and a tetanus shot,” Sam says, tearing it open. Concentrates on Bucky, not his shoulders trying to climb up to his ears with all the eyes on his bare back and not how much his head hurts from the tension and lack of sleep and the fucking light.

“He'll be fine,” Rumlow says, and Sam doesn't sigh because he should have expected it. “Just stitch him up so the bleeding stops, lab'll shoot him up later.” Worth a try, anyway.

They kick a sharps kit across the floor at him when he's almost done, something rattling around in it where it clatters against Sam's thigh. Bucky watches it but doesn't react otherwise, and Sam ignores it, trying to drag it out and figure out how the fuck they're going to get out of here. Bucky's strong on his feet but he clearly doesn't know Sam from Adam even if he's still leaning into Sam like it would mean something if Sam decided to put up a fight.

He drops the hemostat into the sharps container, and there's—a little glass bottle and a syringe. Sam picks it up and turns it over in his hand.

“The fuck is this?” Sam says, because God, he's fucking useless, his head is pounding with exhaustion and pain and he knows exactly what the big fuck off syringe is for. He glances back at the door and wishes he hadn't.

“Sedate him,” Rumlow says, and his hand's back on his gun.

Sedate him. They need Sam to sedate him to get Bucky back under control. He looks at Bucky and Bucky looks back at him, clear blue eyes guileless and trusting.

And God, he could just—not. He’s got Bucky to back him up and Rumlow’s clearly spooked, they could make a break for it. Bucky’s watching him, shoulders rolling and sizing up Rumlow. It could be all over. He wouldn't have to go back. No more blunt fingers in his ass like it's any kind of favor, no more jerking off trying desperately not to think about Steve so that he can't get it up later for Rumlow.

Sam might actually get that steak. This is it.

“Sedate him and get out here, Wilson,” Rumlow says, low and reasonable. The gun comes back out of the holster, down at his side, and Sam can hear someone's stun baton turn on. It prickles up his spine and he can practically feel it, the hot burn mark it left last time flaring up across his chest.

Bucky's on his feet in one motion, between Sam and the door before Sam's even on his feet trying to sprint after him. Rumlow sidesteps Bucky in a practiced motion, like they've done this dancebefore. Bucky sweeps one of the other guys into the hallway before he's caught in the chest by a taser, stun baton coming down on him for good measure as Bucky throws the tall guy into the wall.

One of the women punches Sam in the face, the tall one, Sam trying to block her from the sharps box. He gets her in the jaw but she doesn't even stumble, face twisted as she brings a baton up into the side of his face. His head snaps back and he gets one last flash of another set of tasers catching Bucky with voltage a normal person would never survive before Sam goes down under a pile of bodies.

When he gets another look, it's with Rumlow's knee on his back and Bucky convulsing across the room. He's got to—Bucky's heart could give out, despite whatever they've done to him, because of whatever they've done to him, too much electricity going through his left side and Sam can smell the burnt skin from across the room with the metal arm heating up. It's Riley all over again, burning flesh and sharp ozone and Sam's uselessly miles out of reach.

The short woman scoops up the sharps kit, the tall one glaring daggers into the side of Sam's face and nursing her swelling lip. They yank the tasers off Bucky, who just jerks once where he lies face down on the floor, breathing harshly and Sam can't even tell if he's conscious.

Rumlow digs fingers into Sam's hair and jerks his head up so hard he can't breathe, making sure he can see them kick the shit out of Bucky, still not clearly conscious or not. Sam gasps and chokes, pieces of broken tooth catching in the back of his throat. Some of Sam's stitches split and the blisters burst when they kick Bucky in the chest and Sam winces, winces again when Rumlow pushes his face into the floor and grinds his broken cheekbone into it and he can't get any leverage to get himself off the floor.

“Westfahl, Murphy, Anders,” Rumlow snaps, hauling Sam up with the floor spinning under him. “Cuff the asset, and don't fuck it up this time. Mercer, Rollins, on me.” The short woman shoves her gun in Sam's kidneys to get him moving, Rumlow and the tall asshole Rollins to either side frog marching him back the way he came.

“You pull that shit again and you'll be stitching him up for a lot worse, Wilson,” Rumlow spits at him, shaking him by the arm like a scolded dog as soon as they're down the corridor.

“Don't fucking touch me,” Sam snarls, trying to shake off Rumlow's hands with Rollins's still a vice grip on his arm. Rumlow shoves him stumbling back into the cell he came from and Sam comes up swinging, ears ringing on adrenaline. Bucky's alive and Sam just helped them torture him and he's going to make someone fucking pay for it if it costs him the rest of his teeth. But Rumlow dodges him, shoving him back so they can close the door, and then Sam's just left there shaking with his useless, impotent anger.

 


	3. Peace Is Not An Achievement

It's another two weeks, maybe, before they pull him out again, and by that time he's driven himself so far up the wall wondering what they're doing to Bucky he's almost glad to see Rumlow's ugly face. Not glad enough to let him get in arm's reach until Rumlow tosses the med bag at him.

Bucky, then. Sam'll get in arm's reach of Rumlow for that.

Not so many people in the hallway as last time, few enough that Sam half thinks he's imagining it that everyone's staring at him. Rumlow certainly fucking isn't, confident that Sam's right behind him. Sam takes notes without looking at anything now that he knows where they're going, eyes forward when Rumlow glances back at him. There's another corridor branching off on the way to where they keep Bucky that terminates in double hazard doors. Where they keep the chair, maybe.

The corridor the opposite direction turns after twenty yards, the light different. Up and out, maybe. He marks the access panels in the walls as they go, counting off footsteps in his head. Sam's not cut out for this. Who the fuck even knows where those go, as if Sam's going to John McClane his way out of this shit with Bucky cut up to hell, especially with half of Rumlow's backup dancers waiting for them in the corridor. The young guy, the tall guy, and the short woman. Murphy, Rollins and Mercer, Sam marks them all and watches how they hold their weight, how they split attention between him and Bucky. Eyes on him, like Sam's more of a threat than Bucky.

And—yeah, okay maybe. Bucky sits against the back wall of his cell, eyes glassy and legs out in front of him and left hand curled on his thigh palm up. His right arm hangs to the floor, blood seeping out the cuff of his long black sleeves.

Sam goes to kneel next to Bucky, murmuring sweet nothings at him. Bucky watches him half interested, like Sam's got an interesting tie on instead of a clean-ish version of the shirt he wiped Bucky's blood away with last time. “You're okay, it's just Sam. Gonna cut your sleeve off to see what's going on, okay, Buck? Not going to hurt, just going to cut the fabric back.”

Bucky's right arm is a fucking mess, but Bucky doesn't react except to let Sam pull him forward and get a look at the gashes up the back of his arm and over his shoulder, open down to the muscle and maybe the tendons, but his fingers still work even if his hand is dead cold. Not as big as last time, but it'll need a double layer of stitches. Bucky lets Sam cut the shirt the rest of the way off him, pliant as a rag doll til he's sitting there shirtless.

The cuts Sam stitched up last time are gone, skin smooth like they were never there. He knew Steve and Bucky both did this but it's different seeing it here, like none of this has been real.

He puts a hand on Bucky's chest, hand over his heart and smooth skin. Like it never happened.

“Get the show on the road, Wilson,” Rumlow says. “Nobody wants to watch lesbo softcore.”

“You are such a fucking asshole,” Sam says over his shoulder, one thousand percent done with all of this shit, and the young guy behind Rumlow laughs.

“What, you are,” Murphy says as Sam gets the suture kit set out, and there's the sound of Murphy getting socked in the arm.

They hardly need him for this, Bucky's so compliant, and Sam's torn between anger that they send Bucky into the meat grinder like this and relief that they think they need Sam to patch him up so that he can see Bucky. A guilty, selfish little part of him is glad Bucky's so torn up, so Sam can see him again, and he hates himself for it and what it means they're forcing Bucky to do. Someone's still out there fighting back against Hydra, and here's Sam being glad of it for all the wrong reasons.

“You okay?” Bucky asks, and he sounds so much like himself Sam's heart catches in his chest.

“You remember me, Buck?” Sam asks. Spends so long frozen staring at Bucky that the barbershop quartet in the hall start shifting uneasily, so Sam gets back to work. He keeps his voice down and eyes on the hemostat.

Bucky looks him up and down, searching Sam's face for the answer while Sam digs a needle into him and stitches him up. Bucky shakes his head and Sam lets out the breath he was holding.

“That's okay,” Sam says, even though his throat hurts and it's not, nothing is. “We're okay, we're friends and we're going to get out of this together,” Sam says, trying to make himself believe it. If he can make Bucky believe it, it might come true.

“Where's Steve?” Bucky asks after a minute.

“He's—“ Sam's voice catches. “He's dead, Bucky.”

“Oh,” Bucky breathes, closing his eyes, and that hurts more than anything else could have. Like none of it was real, like it never happened. Like Sam's the one who's got holes in his memory, like there's never been anything except these windowless rooms and days on end of waking up screaming in unending bright light.

Sam swallows and keeps his eyes on the hemostat, fingers in Bucky's arm.

The syringe and vial are in the bottom of the med bag and Sam lays them out when Bucky's stitches are almost done and Rumlow and friends start shifting uneasily behind him. It's a big, ugly syringe with a larger gauge needle than strictly necessary, and the clear bottle's unmarked. They could be having him shoot Bucky up with heroin or sodium thiopental, for all Sam knows.

Sam makes a show of prepping the bottle and filling the syringe where they can see it; the fill line is practically past the plunger stop. He could overdose Bucky on whatever this shit is and never know it.

Sam looks Bucky in the eye as he taps the veins of his arm and—maybe. Maybe Bucky remembers him. He feels Bucky's pulse pick up as they hold eye contact, Bucky looking for something in his face.

“Don't,” Bucky breathes, hardly audible even to Sam. “Please.” Sam swallows once, takes a deep breath and hopes that he's blocking the door as well as he thinks he is. Because how can he, even if Bucky doesn't remember him. How can he do any of this. He lays the syringe along Bucky's arm, and slowly empties it, the clear liquid trickling down his elbow to the cut off shirt.

Sam blows out one long breath, puts the syringe back in the med bag, and makes his hands steady. They don't know. They won't know. It'll be okay.

Sam starts to get up, heart kicking in his chest as Bucky's hands twist in his shirt. “Please,” Bucky says. “Please don't.”

And God, how can he leave Bucky like this, he doesn't even know what Bucky's asking him but he saw the files and Steve would spin in his grave if he knew, if anyone actually buried Steve. But what choice does he have, they need a plan or they might not live through the attempt. “Bucky, I have to—it's okay, it's going to be okay, I'll come back.”

“Wilson, remember what I said last time,” Rumlow says, and Sam's stomach lurches because Bucky's not in any shape to take a repeat. They have to have a plan. Sam has to figure something out. Then they'll get out of here.

“It's okay, Bucky, it's okay, I'll be back,” Sam says, brushing Bucky's hair out of his face. Sam wants to kiss him because when are they ever going to get a chance to again, but he doesn't want Rumlow to have that part of Sam's life too and Bucky doesn't even know him.

So a squeeze of the hand is all he gets, and Sam walks away from Bucky as steadily as he can manage it, as steadily as he can make himself. Bucky tries to push himself standing, but he can't manage it even without the sedative, clumsy with the pain.

Sam's hesitating in the door hating himself, Rumlow's hand on his back like Steve used to, when Bucky says it. It's soft and plaintive and it sounds like the nails in their coffins.

“No.”

Rumlow's hand tightens on his shoulder, Rollin's coming down like a vice, and they all pivot to look at Bucky as Mercer snatches the bag out of Sam's hands.

Bucky's still on the floor looking dead at Sam, confused and scared, and Sam's stomach lurches when Mercer looks down into the med bag. He can see when it registers on her face, that the syringe was never in Bucky's arm. She knows. Or she knows as soon as she looks Sam in the eye and it's written all over his face. He's not cut out for this shit. “The asset's not sedated.”

Rollins and Murphy wrestle Sam into a pin hold, Mercer dropping the bag to flick out her stun baton, eyes on Bucky.

Rumlow steps back to give Sam a long look, like he's weighing the options. Cool and even.

“Y'know, Wilson,” Rumlow says finally. Arms crossed over his chest like he's not mad, just disappointed. “I'm a nice guy, but I don't think you understand what the rules are, and it's wearing my patience a little thin. The asset here,” Rumlow nods at Bucky, “knows how to play by the rules and we don't appreciate you getting his wires crossed.” Sam pulls against Rollins and Murphy's hands on him, panicky as a spooked horse because he knows what's coming as soon as Rumlow crosses the room and snaps his fingers at Bucky.

Bucky struggles to his feet and Rumlow steps into his space, puts a hand on his cheek and leans in like they're lovers. Rumlow says something, too quiet for Sam to catch, and it's stomach-turning intimate how close they are. Bucky's eyes flick back to Sam and Rumlow pulls him back, hand still on Bucky's face and repeating whatever he said.

Then they're both looking at him and Rumlow's smiling.

Sam watches with his stomach flipping as Rumlow fishes in his pocket and comes up with something the size of a quarter. He shows it to Bucky like he's doing a fucking magic trick, then he pats Bucky on his metal arm with it.

Bucky seizes against the wall and Sam lurches for him, as if he could do anything about the pain and the way Bucky's gulping for breath between the gashes and the electricity and Rumlow's hands on him. The thing is one of Nat's little EMP post-its, and it's hers, it's got to be, Stark's flashy Avengers logo and all. And if they—if they've got those. Nat can't be dead. Out of all of them, Nat can't be dead and Rumlow would have thrown it in Sam's face if she were in a cell somewhere too. If Nat's dead then there's no one coming for them at all.

Nat's not dead.

Bucky's metal arm hangs dead at his side and Sam's on his knees before he knows it, pistol whipped in the back of the head. The pain echoes against his broken cheekbone, the light haloing around Bucky in Sam's vision as he's yanked across the floor to where Bucky leans unsteadily against the wall.

Bucky's right there and he doesn't know Sam from Adam and Sam wishes he didn't either because how is he ever going to forgive himself for doing this to Bucky. Rollins presses the point of a knife up under Sam's jaw and he jerks away from it, until they yank his head back to make sure Bucky can see the knife and Bucky goes dead still against whoever is twisting his ripped up right arm behind his back. Bucky is Sam's insurance; Sam is Bucky's liability. He can't tell whose hand is stroking Bucky harder except that the last time this happened it was Steve fucking Bucky from behind with Sam blowing him and Sam can't think about that or he won't live to do anything about it.

“Bet you're not going to bite this time,” Rumlow says in Sam's ear, leaning over like Steve used to and Sam can feel the bastard's cock getting hard where Rumlow brushes against his shoulder, and then it's happening. One of them shakes him by the hair and one of them kicks him in the kidney and one of them pinches his nose shut, his face pounding with the pressure. He doesn't want to hurt Bucky, but he also doesn't want to hurt Bucky by doing this to him or suffocate and it's happening.

And it's—it's not Bucky. Bucky doesn't know him, doesn't hardly know where he is. His dick tastes the same and he smells the same but it's not Bucky. Sam can barely breath past the sharp, grinding pain of his broken cheek, like someone's grinding glass into his eye.

Sam gags and looks up and wishes he hadn't, Bucky's eyes on him horrified and trapped and all Sam can think about is that at least Steve's dead and will never have to see this. Rumlow yanks on his hair and shoves him into Bucky, choking him, and past his own gagging and effort to breath he can feel Bucky going soft. It's nothing like the last time Sam sucked Bucky off before everything went to shit and Sam couldn't make it good even if he wanted to, if he wan't suffocating.

Rumlow yanks Sam's head back so he can gasp and see exactly how hard Bucky isn't. Bucky blinks down at him and then Sam's being shoved away, Rollins' boot on his back when Sam goes sprawling on the floor.

Bucky's not hard, less so by the second. “Fucking useless,” Rumlow says, and backhands Bucky across the face. Bucky rocks back with it, blinking slowly as Sam's hauled back up. Sam staggers into Rollins with his legs unsteady under him, Rollins shoving him back into the corridor and no one says anything.

And God, Sam doesn't know whether to feel worse that he got Bucky slapped or that Bucky's in there somewhere and remembers him. He catches sight of Mercer and Murphy sedating Bucky before they're too far down the corridor, and Sam hopes selfishly that Bucky will get to forget it because Sam wishes he could.

“Did you fags ever figure out how to fuck, or did you and Cap just braid freezerburn's hair all that time?” Rumlow says to Sam's rigid back as they push him down the hall. “Next time we'll make sure to pop him a viagra or six.”

They walk him the rest of the way in silence, everybody else moving past them going on with their busy squid Nazi lives. Normalest shit in the world. Same old, nothing to see here.

At the door of his cell someone kicks his knees out from under him, because why the hell not, after everything else. Sam goes sprawling on his face, shaky on adrenaline and anger, tucking into the landing like it actually matters. He rolls back up onto his feet because he's going to live through this if it kills him, Rumlow standing there in the door with Rollins behind him to force the point home. Not angry, just disappointed.

“That’s what he is, Wilson,” Rumlow says, and there’s—fuck him, there’s almost pity in his voice. “The asset does what he's told. Sooner you do too, the happier you’ll be.”

“Fuck you. That's not who he is.” God his face hurts, his face and his hands and he hates that he can't just throw himself at them until they finally shoot him because he has to get Bucky out of this horrorshow even if Steve and Nat and everyone else they know are dead.

Rumlow shrugs. “He’s been that for a fuck of a lot longer than whoever you think you knew. Bucky fucking Barnes,” Rumlow laughs.

“He’s a good man,” Sam says, and if everything didn't hurt so much he'd beat that shit eating smirk off Rumlow's face where he leans in the doorway.

“Maybe he used to be,” Rumlow says, and leaves him alone there.

* * *

Bucky doesn't recognize him the next time or the next and Sam's almost grateful for it. If they're going to get out, if they're going to have another chance once Sam figures out where the hell they are and what to do, they can't have a repeat. Sam needs Bucky and he needs access to Bucky, and he hates that he has to play by those rules.

Didn't make it sugar, playing by the rules. Sam hums it to himself over and over while he waits to patch up Bucky's gunshot wounds and chemical burns, stomach sick and mind numb with it every time he walks back out into Rumlow's waiting arms. He keeps his shoulders straight and his walk steady so that Bucky won't pick up his mood, keeping up the act that he's playing by the rules.

* * *

Any day now—any second—Steve’s going to come crashing through a wall of Nazis, eight feet tall and shield in hand. Bucky’s going to remember them for more than a handful of minutes at a time and they’re all going to punch their way out of this together. Then they’re going to have gentle, sort of weepy sex, and sleep in a real goddamn bed for about ten thousand years.

While eating steak.

It’ll be great.

Except that Steve's dead, Bucky doesn't know him, and Sam has to make his own luck.


	4. The Courage to Take It

“Look alive, sunshine,” Rumlow says, and alive is the last thing Sam wants to be right now, head pounding and shoulder stiff from where Bucky yanked him off his feet and almost put him through the wall last time. It's been hardly two days, even Bucky can't be healed up from the deep chemical burns they brought him back with. Battery acid or worse, and Sam's not looking forward to finding out what they've done to him on top of it.

Rumlow stands there in full tac gear even though it’s the middle of the goddamn night. Or at least near enough that Sam can tell in his bright lit cell, sense of time fucked around worse than it was during basic and SERE both, when he at least had daylight to tell the nights apart. Rumlow stands there like an asshole while Sam rolls to his feet, snapping his fingers when it's not quick enough.

He leaves the door open and Sam follows, head pounding from lack of sleep and the knock in the teeth Bucky gave him time before last. He's rubbing his burning eyes in the door when he realizes Rumlow's not going towards Bucky's usual cell, he's gone the opposite direction.

Down the corridor and still impossible to tell if it's day or night. Night, probably, not as many people out but they still stare at him like a dog on two legs and Rumlow pays them and Sam no fucking mind. Sam keeps track of the lefts and rights in case he needs this later but there's no way to tell which way is out, no windows and less signage. He thinks about bolting for it, but every little side corridor he glances down has more people, some of them with guns. So following Rumlow it is, as if that's ever ended well.

Up one set of stairs and down another, then around so many corners he's sure Rumlow is walking him in circles and then up another set of stairs. Sam's going to be royally fucked if he ever has to run for it, his cardio completely shot after four months of just jumping jacks and jogging in place and gut-flipping terror.

The corridor looks exactly the fucking same when Rumlow stops to open a door, and whatever Sam was expecting, it wasn't this. It's a little three room apartment, complete with couch and kitchenette, like a counselor's dorm at evil sleep away camp or unmarried officers' housing on base. There's a mattress on the floor of one bare room with a clean change of clothes and the med bag sitting on it, and it's not until then that Sam realizes he's trading one cell for another and maybe he doesn't want it.

“So they let you bring home your pet monkey after all,” Rollins growls over Sam’s shoulder, and Jesus Christ he's a tall motherfucker, startling Sam back against Rumlow. Rollins looms up out of the only other bedroom and Sam fucking hates where this is going because he won't be any match against the two of them. He can still feel Rollins' hands in his hair and Rumlow's hard cock against him from last time and now he's trapped in a little room with them again and Sam wants to crawl out of his skin.

“Yeah, what of it,” Rumlow growls back, stepping around Sam so he's chest to chest with Rollins, still in full tac gear, and suddenly Sam is in the middle of some kind of fucked up squid Nazi mating display, complete with frat boy pheromones and chest beating. Rumlow and Rollins circle Sam and eye each other past him, like being tossed in the hyena pen for a fucking nature documentary. Sam doesn’t particularly care for the thought that that makes him the wounded baby antelope.

“Didn't think they'd let you actually keep it, is all,” Rollins says over Sam’s head and fuck all this shit. “Or is he fucking you in the ass too.” And Jesus Christ Sam almost laughs at that because they really are fucking frat boys, obsessed with whose dick goes in whose ass. He doesn’t laugh, though, because he’s not that suicidal yet, and maybe if he stays quiet they’ll forget about him and leave him out of the creepy squid mating rituals.

“Go fuck yourself, Jack,” Rumlow spits, and there it is, he shoves Sam out of the way to push himself in Rollins' face. Rumlow tries to go nose to nose with him but he’s not quite tall enough and Sam takes the opportunity to slowly back away into the bedroom with the mattress and the med bag before the kissing starts. Or the post-coital cannibalism.

He closes the door of the bare little bedroom because it's much too fucking clear what's about to happen on that couch and Sam wants no fucking part of it. He sits with his back against the closed door for all the good it'll do because it's one of those stupid robot sliding pocket doors Stark wanted to install in everything, and Sam resents the shit out of who ever did the interior decorating for Stark and Hydra both because what the fuck has happened to his life.

* * *

Rumlow wanders out of the shower after, towel slung low around his hips when he taps the door to Sam's room open and Sam practically falls over on the bastard's feet. Sam glares at him because he didn't mean to get caught dozing but the lights in the little room turn off and it's the first time he's had darkness in going on three months. Rumlow just throws a towel in his face, the ripped, scarred up bastard.

“What is this?” Sam says, suspicious.

“A fuckin' towel,” Rumlow says, going back to the bathroom to dig around for another towel for the naked and very clearly fucked out Rollins visible through the bedroom door. Sam stands in the door between what's apparently his room and the living room, hand twisted in the towel. “You know, for a shower? I'm not fucking someone who stinks as bad as you,” Rumlow says over his shoulder.

“Go to hell,” Sam says.  Rumlow said it with such a straight face Sam can't tell if he doesn't get the difference between rape and sex, but he has to, that's a level of fucked up Sam can't handle and he can't feel bad for someone like Rumlow.

“You don't want a shower you can go back to the basement,” Rumlow says with a shrug.

“Fuck off,” Sam says, because there is _nothing_ he wants more in this world than a shower except a beer but there's nothing that can possibly make him ask for it from these assholes.

“Fine, whatever,” Rumlow says and just leaves it at that, mellow like they're just playing evil frat house and the hazing's been all in good fun. Sam stands there staring in the doorway until staring any longer means watching Rumlow flop naked back into bed with Rollins, so Sam doubletimes it to the bathroom and shuts the door.

And God, it's everything he ever wanted and more but Sam still can't get away from Rumlow even alone in the shower. He turns the water up so hot it hurts, trying to drown out all the other hurts and it feels so fucking good he just stands there trying to pretend it never has to run out. The only shampoo in the shower smells like Rumlow and it's so overwhelming Sam gags, rinsing it out of his hair with his hands braced against the wall because he doesn't trust himself not to retch any more at the smell, even when it's mostly in his imagination. He can't jerk off any more without thinking about Rumlow's stubble on his neck, why not this too.

His head hurts and his knuckles hurt and his face hurts like hell just brushing his teeth. But at least the toothpaste tastes normal, doesn't smell like fratboy jocks or roidhead piss. Small favors, et cetera.

He almost doesn’t recognize himself in the fogged mirror, it’s been so long. He’s dropped weight, he knew that without looking, but the beard and hair make him look ragged, teeth broken so bad his mother wouldn't recognize him if he smiled. He’s gaunt and scruffy as the guys at the shelter even after a shower.

His mother would drop change in his coffee cup and keep walking by.

There’s a dull safety razor on the sink. He should pocket it, hide it away to use in an escape. Get the fuck out of here, get Bucky out of here.

Instead he shaves with it, because he's a tired, selfish son of a bitch. It takes so long Rumlow sticks his head in the door when Sam’s not even half done, but he backs off when Sam glares at him and just keeps shaving.

He'd shave his head, too, if the razor weren't so dull. When he gets out of this, he's going to shave his head and never think about having some white asshole's fingers in his hair ever again. Not much to do about the dark hollows under his eyes, but getting rid of the beard makes him feel more like himself.

Once he's sure Rumlow and Rollins are passed out for the night, he works up the courage to try the locks and toss the place looking for something sharp. They're careful bastards, though, and all he comes up with is a set of loose shoelaces in the back of the bathroom cupboard. Unless he maybe wants to strangle someone with a terrycloth towel, there's not much else. The stinking bodyspray would get noticed if it went missing, but he keeps it in mind in case he needs to spray someone in the eyes with it.

The place is military neat despite the frat boy stink of body spray, cheap cigars and dirty boots. The second bedroom and the kitchen locks with a thumbprint so he can't even make a shiv out of a spoon. The little suture scissors in the medbag are short and blunt, and he tries to sharpen them down against the needle holder but they're too soft to hold much of an edge. No phones or matches left out, not even a pair of goddamn shoes or a way to figure out the date or where he is.

There isn't even a fucking clock in the place, so he has no idea the next day or the day after if he's left alone for eight or twelve hours at a time except that Rumlow and Rollins come back in varying shades of dirty and pissed off to fall into bed or bully him into a corner or shove him in a room with Bucky in varying shades of dirty and pissed off.

So Sam palms the shoelaces and hides them under a corner of carpet he manages to peel back in the bedroom. He can use them to strangle someone or zipline over a moat of burning alligators when he MacGyvers his way out of here.

Or hang himself, more likely, but he tries not to think about that more than he has to.

Because mother of God, if Sam thought Rumlow was bad enough, Rollins is a scary motherfucker. Dead fucking quiet most of the time, but he shoves Rumlow around with just a look and that's enough to freak Sam right the fuck out. Sam stays out of his way if he can help it and Rollins doesn't seem to give a damn about him either, which is fine by Sam.

By the time he realizes that Rumlow only tries to fuck him when Rollins isn't around, it's almost funny. Fucked up and absurd like the rest of this shit, but funny. Rollins doesn't stick his dick in anyone else and Rumlow'll never take it up the ass in front of Sam, so Rollins is practically a chaperone. He tries to keep that in mind when he has to listen to the two of them fuck on the couch, stomach knotted up worrying that he's wrong.

He tries not to listen to what those two trainwrecks get up to together behind closed doors and he hopes to God he never has to find out what makes Rumlow make those sounds. He’s not sure if he should be grateful or freaked out that Rumlow mellows out the morning after.

 


	5. How the Game Works

“You're not Steve.”

Sam sets the bag down and his knees crack as he kneels next to Bucky. He could get old like this, go gray and arthritic watching Bucky get dragged back young as ever and torn up to hell and they'd still have the same conversation every time, and wouldn't that be a special kind of hell. Sam tries to ignore Rumlow propping up the doorway, the smell, his own thoughts, everything.

Bucky's cuffed to the floor, big mag cuffs over his hands and locked to a big new eyebolt drilled into the floor, like he's a feral dog staked out in a yard. Sam sits on his heels and lets Bucky look at him, doing priority assessment with his hands on his knees hoping it'll calm Bucky down.

“No,” Sam says eventually. “But I'm here to help you.” It's close enough to true. Would to God Sam was Captain America, maybe then he'd be able to get them out of this clusterfuck. “You remember me?”

Bucky turns his head, like if he can get a different angle he might recognize Sam. Maybe one day he will. “Yes,” Bucky says, and then, before the hope gets big enough to crush, “No,” and Sam nods and gets the med bag open.

That's okay. Both can be true. That'll have to be enough.

“Well,” Sam says, and Bucky doesn't flinch away this time when Sam puts a hand on his leg to cut his pants away where they're torn and singed. Slow going with the blunt little tape scissors even after Sam tried to sharpen them. “Your name's Bucky, and I'm Sam, and we're friends. You remember anything else?”

“Steve's dead,” Bucky says, spitting it like an accusation.

“Yeah. Yeah, he is,” Sam says, wiping his hands and the little forceps down with alcohol before he goes fishing for shrapnel. Tired, that's what he is. Because out of all the nineties movies for Sam to get trapped in, why did it have to be the unholy bondage-obsessed lovechild of Groundhog Day and The Birdcage. Literally anything else would have been better. Independence Day. Dead Presidents. Fuck, Blade, anything but this.

Bucky's not as bad as usual, maybe hence the cuffs. He caught some shrapnel to the thigh and knee, but it's nothing he probably couldn't walk off once Sam gets the shrapnel out. Sam wishes he knew what they were sending Bucky out for, who they thought they had to send the ghost after, because Hydra's supposed to be in charge but it feels like Sam's patching Bucky up more frequently and he hates that he hopes it means something.

“You recognize anyone they sent you after?” Sam says. Chews his lip and drops a bit of twisted metal in the med bag with the rest. Sharp enough he might be able to do something with it, if no one takes the bag from him.

Bucky shakes his head solemnly. This would be easier if it were linear, if Bucky just never remembered anything instead of these bits and pieces of forwards and back. “That's okay,” Sam says, more for himself. “That's okay, but just—just tell me if you do recognize anyone, if you remember anything.” As if Bucky's even going to remember this conversation.

“We kissed,” Bucky says, and Sam's breath comes short as Bucky looks him in the eye. Bucky's leaning forward close enough to kiss, hands cuffed behind him and legs tucked so Sam can pull shrapnel out of his thigh. If not for the cuffs, it could be any after-action from the last two years, Steve leaning in the door instead of some fucking Nazi. Sam licks his lips, thinks about kissing Bucky, about how good he smells even past the sweat and blood, how good he smells because of it. “I tried to kill you.”

Because that's exactly what Sam needs to be reminded of right now, his nightmares of spiraling down to DC with literally nothing but a wing and a prayer.

“Not in that order, but yeah,” Sam says, keeping his voice down, hoping Rumlow can't hear but these blank white walls bounce all kind of sound. “You, me, and Steve, yeah.”

“Ten minutes til your conjugal's up, Wilson,” Rumlow says from the door. And Christ Sam has been trying not to think about it like that, because how fucked up is it that he's the first guy in his family to go to prison. Grandma would probably understand that Nazi summer camp isn't quite the same, but he's glad she's not around to see it anyway.

“Fuck you,” Sam says over his shoulder.

“Maybe later, if you're good,” Rumlow says with a little kissy noise.

“I wouldn't fuck you with Rollins' dick,” Sam says, and Rumlow honest to God laughs at that, the crazy fucker.

Bucky watches Sam prep the syringe, because neither of them are going to get very far with Bucky cuffed to the floor. “I need you to do me a favor, Bucky,” Sam says, quiet as he can manage, tapping the veins of Bucky's foot because there's no way he's going to manage a clear shot to the cephalic with Bucky cuffed like that. “I need you to try to remember anything you recognize from before this, Nat, Wanda, anyone who knows your name, and tell them about me and me about them. You think you can do that?”

The syringe slides in too easily, Bucky's breathing steady even though it has to hurt like a bitch. “You hear me, Bucky?” Sam says again, because when is he going to get Bucky this clearheaded again.

Bucky looks at him sleepily, and Sam can see the chance slipping away as Bucky's eyes go glassy and he relaxes against the cuffs. “Sorry, Sam,” Bucky breathes, and that's it, he's gone.

Sam brushes the hair out of Bucky's face and leans him against the wall a little more comfortably, and that's it.

Rumlow yanks the med bag away as soon as Sam's in arm's reach but otherwise keeps his fucking hands to himself on the way back, laughing to himself as Sam walks past him and keeps on going. Easier to scope possible exit plans, even if it makes his skin crawl to have Rumlow at his back. That's what Sam tells himself, because what has he got if he hasn't got his dignity.

Not even the fucked as shit normal of what little routine he has in this place, it turns out, because Rumlow tosses the bag and grabs a laptop from the back bedroom before Sam can make a dignified retreat to his corner of the evil frat house. Sam stands there, torn because a laptop could mean information, could mean figuring out where the fuck they are, could mean knowing anything besides the shit all that he knows now.

“The fuck is this,” Sam says, Rumlow flopping himself down on the couch and opens the laptop to—

Football.

Giants versus the Washington Racial Slurs on an overgrown laptop, speakers tinny and grating. Christ. The game's streaming live and it's at least a month later than Sam thought, the summer gone.

“Football, the fuck does it look like? Your team’s playing first game of the season.” A month lost, somewhere, he lost track of days somewhere in that endless bright light when he thought he'd been keeping track.

“I root for the Patriots, asshole,” Sam says, still rooted to the spot with how shaken he is by the date. It's nothing, but if he can lose that much time, what else will he lose track of trapped here.

Rumlow grunts without paying him much attention. Asshole Giants fans, still fucking sore losers. “Go get me a beer,” Rumlow says without looking at him.

Sam bristles, because of all the fucking things they can make him do, they can’t make him play along with this. “I’m not your houseboy,” Sam says slowly, squaring himself off for a fight. Rape he can live through, helping them torture Bucky he can justify as keeping them both alive, but he'll never be broken enough to Uncle Tom.

Rumlow looks up at him finally, face blanked with surprise. And then he fucking laughs, a short little bark at first and then real, like Sam’s just told the best fucking joke in the world. Rumlow gets up and Sam’s braced for it, ready to finally punch the bastard’s face in, but Rumlow just walks past him still laughing to himself. Then there’s the sound of the fridge and two bottles being opened, because what the ever living fuck is happening to Sam’s life.

He’s still wondering when Rumlow comes back and presses a beer into his hand. “No wonder Rogers liked you,” Rumlow says, draping himself back down on the couch with his boots kicked up.

“Go fuck yourself,” Sam says, but his heart’s not in it. It's mostly reflex at this point anyway. The beer’s cold in his hand and it smells so good even if it’s a shitty Bud Lite. Rumlow’s not even paying attention to him, yelling at the fucking useless Giants as they fumble their first goal, and this is not what Sam thought his Faustian bargain would look like.

Steve’s dead. Natasha, Wanda, Rhodes, Tony and the rest are dead or worse. Bucky’s getting carted off to be tortured or frozen or God knows what.

And here’s Sam with a beer in his hand and his heart beating so loud he can’t hear the television. It’s vertiginous, like being knocked out of the sky and realizing it’s him moving, not the ground, the way the game cuts to commercial. For fucking doritos, like people still eat those and get high and have normal lives now that Hydra's in charge. Like nothing’s changed about the world, like his cheekbone isn’t broken and he hasn’t been raped by some shithead white supremacist for the last four months.

Sam sags onto the couch and Rumlow just dicks around with his phone, and this is what it must have been like for Steve. Unrecognizable normal, people's whole lives going on around him after the world's ended.

What he should do is throw the beer in Rumlow’s face. What he should do is break the bottle on the coffee table and use it to gouge the asshole's cock off.

What he should do is anything but fucking sit here staring at the label with condensation dripping down his hand.

_The perfect beer for removing 'no' from your vocabulary._

Christ.

But then Sam might never drink a beer again, and he can’t stop staring at the peeling label, damp and sticking to his hand and he’s never wanted anything more in his life, so bad he can practically taste it, because he's a weak, sorry son of a bitch.

It tastes exactly as bad as it should. Sweet, watered down piss beer. It hits him like he's seventeen and sneaking bad gin from the liquor cabinet and the Giants are down by six points at halftime but it's hardly any consolation because it means the Washington Racial Slurs are up and the world still doesn't make any goddamn sense.

Or, it would if he was on the outside of all this, because wasn't that the entire point. Insight Two went up under the new Shield and Hydra went with it, and no one batted an eye because it was supposed to keep everyone safe from DC and New York and Greenwich and Wakanda and Sokovia and every other Avengers-inflicted disaster.

And Hydra did.

So maybe the world does make sense, it's just not the world Sam wants to be in.

“Rogers ever tell you he lost his virginity to the Steelers getting reamed in the second quarter? Pretty good Superbowl halftime show that year,” Rumlow says, and it takes Sam a second to register what he even means because what the fuck. Like they're just shooting the shit, like this is the pleasantest shit in the world instead of Sam wallowing in self pity.

Sam glances at the phone in Rumlow's hand before he even thinks about it, and Rumlow tips the phone so Sam can see it. He's got that stupid look on his face like he thinks he's already won, like Sam's got none of the cards in this game but at least one of them might as well enjoy it along the way.

And yeah, that’s a picture of Steve with Rumlow’s dick in his ass looking beautiful as ever, blushed down to where his ass was slapped raw and not a football game in sight. Steve never said in so many words that him and Rumlow had been fucking, but he all but said it. Sam's not going to let Rumlow get a rise out of him and anyway he's got basically the same photo of Steve on his own phone.

Had.

God, Sam misses his phone.

And aspirin. And shoes. Basically everything that made the late twentieth century worth living in.

“What's your point?” Sam says, making himself look away from Steve's beautiful parted lips and flushed cheeks. He looks Rumlow in the eye because he didn't trade away his dignity for a shitty light beer.

Rumlow drops the fake charm, and it's whiplash how fast it changes. He puts his elbows on his knees and leans towards Sam, close enough to kiss and Sam can see the shadow bruises under his eyes from the broken nose Sam gave him. He smells like Sam's nightmares and Sam can even see why Steve liked him; Rumlow's got Bucky's intensity when he puts the charm off and he'd be charming and funny if he wasn't a fucking rapist.

“My point,” Rumlow says slowly, letting the words hang over them, “is that Rogers and Barnes are both just as dead, and there's not a fucking thing about their lives Hydra doesn't own. No one's coming for either of you unlucky bastards.” Rumlow stands and Sam clenches his jaw so hard his teeth hurt, bracing as Rumlow moves around the couch. “Want another beer?” he says, in that fake pleasant voice that sends a chill down Sam's spine, and Sam's rescued from having to answer by Rollins coming home to the evil little birdcage.

* * *

Steve's dead, Bucky might as well be, and no one's coming for Sam.

Except there's no point making threats if there's no possibility of it being true.

No reason to try to scare Sam out of trying to work Bucky if there's no one to get word to. Someone's fighting back against Hydra because they're still sending Bucky out against them and they're still sending Sam in to patch him up, so Sam's going to make some luck and get them the hell out of this because they might not know it yet, but there's someone out there coming for them. Sam stares at the ceiling of his bare little room and keeps that in mind while he waits to see if Bucky knows him again.

And—he doesn't, not really. Bucky leans heavily into him and breathes his name but he's too far gone on shock and blood loss to say anything before he passes out again in Sam's lap. He's a bloody, bullet-grazed mess, right arm bandaged with duct tape where a bullet passed through and hopefully missed bone. Sam holds his breath willing Bucky to stay out long enough to take the tape off, because the gunshot's not so bad, but the tape rips hair even though it's supposed to dissolve with sweat.

But.

Bucky's got a faint little hourglass and a little arrow scratched into the inflamed skin around the gunshot wound, where it'd been covered by the tape.

Hawkeye and Widow. Sam keeps his body between Bucky and the door, working like it's nothing, Clint and Nat are alive and Bucky had it together enough to recognize them and tell Sam about it. There is someone coming for them after all.

 


	6. To Build a Better World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally posted as the minifill version for this prompt, until things got out of hand and blew up into this longer version. This is lightly edited to make it fit a little better, although it's still slightly off tone, but I wanted to put it in here where it would fall chronologically with the rest.

Sam smells him before he sees him, the deep, clotted blood and chemical burn of explosions that are the only reason he's allowed to see Bucky anymore.

Bucky lists in the corner like a doll someone's tossed there, slumped bonelessly with his head propped against the wall to watch the door. His left hand spasms against the floor when the door opens, right tucked into the corner to protect whatever injury he's got. Bucky's a pale, shocky gray, chained to the wall even though he can barely move, blood staining the wall and floor around him.

"He needs a doctor," Sam says, hesitating in the door like a coward. It's touch and go how much Bucky remembers him time to time, but this is the worst they've dragged him back yet and it only takes once for it to be over for Sam. Bucky is, selfishly, his only insurance in here; if he lets Bucky die, they have no use for him. If Bucky kills him because he doesn't know Sam from Hydra, well, it's no loss to anyone but Brock Rumlow's rapist dick.

"And here you are," Rumlow says with a wave of his hand, settling in to prop up the wall and supervise.

"He needs morphine, a blood transfusion, clean saline--I can't--"

"You've got a half hour to stitch him up before he goes back in the tank," Rumlow snarls, swinging Sam around by the collar to slam back against the wall. The medic bag rattles against the wall and Bucky rattles with it, jerking against the chains tying him to the wall. Sam can see him over Rumlow's shoulder, feral and half mad but still Bucky, somewhere in there. "Clean him up or don't, I don't give a shit," Brock spits in Sam's face. He smells like he does when he wants to fuck Sam rough at the end of a bad day; like sweat and anger and his terrible frat boy deoderant. "But don't fucking bitch about it."

Sam shoves Rumlow's hands off him, turning to Bucky with a stiff back.

"Goddamn pussy medics," Rumlow spits at his back.

Bucky knows him, watches him and Rumlow warily, tracking Sam's movement toward him and Brock's movement away. Sam gives Rumlow half a glance before setting down his bag next to Bucky and kneeling slowly next to him, palms open. Rumlow goes back to propping up the wall, cleaning under his nails with a pocket knife, and Sam hates himself for being grateful that Rumlow might have clean nails next time.

Sam pulls out his bare supplies, the emergency glucose first. He rubs it on Bucky's gums, an obscene parody of what they used to do, and Rumlow snorts derisively at the show. Sam glares over his shoulder at him, but keeps his attention on Bucky. Just because Bucky's less likely to lash out when it's Sam putting in his stitches doesn't mean he doesn't.

He lays out the rest once Bucky's come around enough to take the glucose and a bottle of water himself. Pathetic, is what his kit is, the bare essentials Hydra will risk the Winter Soldier killing someone with. Two bottles of water and emergency glucose. Suture kit, gauze and iodine. Duct tape and super glue. Inhumane, is what it is.

Sam cuts Bucky's clothes off him with the blunt tipped tape scissors and tries not to think about anything. Not about the shape Bucky's in, not Rumlow watching predatorialy now that Bucky's clothes are being cut off, not about the happier times Sam's undressed Bucky, in such a hurry their clothes tore. It's worse once Sam gets the compression shirt cut off him, cuts that had been bleeding sluggishly starting to bleed again once the fabric is peeled away from the scabs, deeper than it all looked hidden under the black tac suit and burned besides. 

Bucky's leg isn't as bad as he expected, but that's not saying much, all of him scorched in a way that can only mean he was caught by the heat of the blast as well as the shrapnel. Bucky doesn't even react when Sam starts to carefully dab the his raw skin with iodine.

"Where's Steve?" Bucky asks with his eyes closed, because it's one of those kind of days.

He thinks about lying to Bucky, but he hasn't yet. Hydra lies to Bucky; Sam won't, even though it hurts. "He's dead," Sam says, irrigating the deepest shrapnel hits, careful of the water because there won't be more no matter how badly Bucky needs it. Steve's been dead for months. Bucky just nods with his eyes closed tightly, because somewhere in there he remembers, he just needs Sam to remember for him sometimes.

Sam stitches him up in silence, trying to find words to help Bucky remember, but his own throat closes up. Tears aren't sterile, but there's not much he can do about any of it. Bucky watches him after a while, the rescue glucose waking him up some.

He reaches up to touch Sam's face, his own last dose of Hydra's order. It barely hurts anymore, if he doesn't think about it too much, if he doesn't give Rumlow a reason to push his face into the floor. Bucky's fingers are cool, brightening the pain just a little, but smoothing it away in the same motion.

"It hurts less if you pretend to like it," Bucky says, his head lolling on his neck, hand dropping like that was the last of his energy. He's quiet, barely audible to Sam. Rumlow doesn't notice, still picking his nails. "He won't hurt you if you don't fight back."

And God, he knew, he couldn't not know with Rumlow panting it into his ear when he gets in particularly vicious moods, how much Steve had begged before he knew, how Bucky does whatever he's told, but it's something else hearing it this way and knowing it in his bones. He'd cry for Bucky forever if it did either of them any good, but it won't, so he doesn't.

"Drug him up and get the show on the road, Wilson," Rumlow says from the door, bored.

"Don't fucking rush me unless you want to take responsibility for him bleeding out," Sam snaps over his shoulder, and his voice comes out annoyed instead of broken.

But then it's time, and Sam can't dawdle over Bucky's stitches any longer without actually looking like he's dawdling. The syringe is huge, the worst part of his kit, and they take the label off the bottle he fills it from, so he doesn't know if he's even drugging Bucky with the same thing from time to time. 

"Can you hold out your arm for me, Buck?" he asks, and Bucky isn't so far gone that he doesn't. Rumlow watches this part with unnerving focus, watchful since the time Sam faked it. "You're doing great, you're so good for me, Bucky," Sam murmurs, sweet quiet nothings as he strokes Bucky's inner elbow to find the vein. "Just a little longer, Buck, I just need you to hang on a little longer and remember, and we'll get out of this together." How, he doesn't know, but someone has to be alive and looking for them. They have to be.

They wait until Bucky's lolled back against the wall again, glassy eyed and distant, pulse sluggish, and then Rumlow's yanking him out. 

Steve would hate him for what he's let them do to Bucky, what he's helped them do to Bucky.  God rest him.

Rumlow follows him out the door and Sam takes the lead, trying not to look at the cart being rolled to Bucky's cell after them. Sam knows where he's going; Rumlow likes the fantasy that he's so broken he doesn't need to be led, and one of these days Sam is going to put it to use and get Bucky out of here.

"You know this would never work with Rogers," Rumlow says conversationally, like he's talking about the weather. That same teasing sneer, telling Sam about something he'll never see again. "Rogers got through that cottage cheese head with just a word or two, but you? He doesn't remember a damn thing about you. He's got more memory of my dick up his ass than he ever had of you." 

Rumlow slaps a hand on Sam's shoulder and holds it, like they're just telling stories about an old army buddy. Rumlow's like this sometimes, when they pretend to watch football together, like they're friends and it's Sam's fault for not understanding that things just are the way they are.

Bucky's right. It hurts more when he fights back, and Sam's afraid after that the pain is the only thing that keeps him sane.

 


	7. The Courage Not To

Sam stumbles out of the bare little bedroom at ass o'clock a week later to the unholy sound of Rumlow and Rollins playing house. His head hurts and his teeth hurt and Rumlow and Rollins are in the little kitchen smoking cheap cigarillos and cooking. Like a hangover that keeps on giving, the both of them.

“Are you making pancakes?” Sam stands in the door way, sure he’s finally lost it because he's slowly starving to death and now there's fucking pancakes. This is what he gets for selfishly day dreaming about being rescued instead of doing something about it his own damn self. This is what he gets for drinking Rumlow’s beer, this fucking surreal domestic playacting of rapists making pancakes on a Sunday morning. Or whenever Nazis take the day off.

“Yep,” Rumlow says, flipping one and whistling tunelessly.

It’s like he’s fallen into bizarro world except that the caterpillar smokes shitty domestic cigars and the Cheshire cat has a metal arm. “Why?” Sam says, because seriously what the fuck.

“Because fuck you, that’s why,” Rumlow says, and Rollins snorts into his coffee. There’s three plates set out on the table, and that more than anything crawls up Sam’s spine.

Because it’s—what the fuck is he supposed to do in this situation. Pancakes made by Nazis has to be favorable treatment, even if he doesn't want the fucking pancakes. There’s knives, and the hot skillet, and a cup of motherfucking coffee sitting out for him next to the coffee machine. He could throw it in Rumlow’s face and bolt for the door, try to make a run for it. He could do it. Break a plate and run for it.

But Sam’s barefoot, and Rollins is already wearing his gun, and Sam doesn’t know where he even is or how to get out of the facility.

He sits down across from Rollins heavily, trying not to let it look like he’s staring at the holster, even though he can’t drag his eyes away from it. Maybe Nazis don’t take days off. Is it still complicity if there’s no chance of him making it? Or is it only complicity if he actually eats the pancakes? The UCMJ never covered Nazi pancakes.

Rumlow puts bacon on the plate in front of him and Sam sits back like he's been slapped. “Don't tell me you're a fucking vegetarian,” Rumlow says, as if that's the one boundary he'd respect out of all of this.

“Or vegan,” Rollins says.

Sam takes a bite of bacon just to be spiteful.

All Rumlow needs is a little apron, serving up plates and grinding out Rollins' crappy cigarillo in the sink. They're both in such a fucking good mood Sam both does and doesn't want to know why.

And Christ he's hungry, like he forgot how to be hungry eating nothing but bland mush for four months and it took Rumlow's fucking pancakes to remind him how to be a person again. Sam clenches his jaw and doesn't just shove food in his face like he wants to because he's got his dignity if he's got nothing else. At the end of this, there'll be steak, and it'll be better than any rapist's fucking pancakes. Sam cuts into them with the side of his fork, and hates how clumsy his hands are after four months of no practice.

“Dry,” Rollins says around a mouthful of pancakes, pouring more syrup over his plate before he passes it to Sam.

“Fuck you,” Rumlow says back, in that tone that means they fucked last night, and Sam’s stomach turns. Fucking weird squid Nazi mating rituals.

He concentrates on the syrup instead because it’s—he pours and doesn’t look at it, because it’s _pure New York 100% grade B dark!_

They’re in New York.

They’re in New York, or close enough to the border one direction or another that the motherfuckers stopped at a farmer’s market for maple syrup. Do Nazis shop at farm stands? They must, because he’s staring at _New York maple syrup grade B dark 100% pure!_ and trying not to look like he’s gone out of his damn mind.

They’re in New York.

“You get that in the sandbox, or after?” Rumlow asks, shaking him out of it and pointing with his fork at the scar up Sam’s forearm. And it's creepy, that they know this shit about him, even though it makes sense that they know he served. They didn't bother interrogating him because with Insight they didn't need to, but it's still creepy and he's still not going to give them anything.

Sam takes a breath and puts down his fork carefully, hands flat on the table. Better this than pancakes, anyway. “Staff Sergeant Samuel Cornish Wilson, FR four seven—“

“Fuck you, Wilson, just making conversation,” Rumlow says, and Rollins laughs without looking up. And fuck them both for pretending this can be anything other than exactly what it is. As if they can just make fucking small talk, as if Sam's being rude reminding the assholes that he's a prisoner of war.

Sam picks up his fork again and eats sourly. The pancakes Sam makes—made—makes—are better than this. These aren't dry, they're too sweet, got no buttermilk tang, and Sam wishes for better times when it only seemed like everyone was trying to kill them.

“Your mom emailed again, she says pick up your damn phone,” Rumlow says to Rollins after a while, and Jesus Christ on a bicycle. Rollins makes a noncommittal noise and starts tapping out something on his own tablet.

At least the coffee is decent. Doesn't help much with the pounding stress headache behind his eyes and in the back of his head, but it's smooth and black as the way Bucky made it and Sam hopes to God that Hydra didn't teach Bucky to make coffee too because Steve could never make coffee that didn't strip paint. The coffee is decent and the last time he had pancakes it was at home with Steve and Bucky both half naked and pleasantly bruised before everything went to shit and Jesus Christ Sam is not going to cry in front of these assholes.

“Bout time to go put the murder zombie on a leash,” Rumlow says. “You awake over there, Wilson?”

“Yeah,” Sam says, jerking himself back from navel-gazing. “Yeah, just wondering what Nazi Mother's Day cards look like.”

“We’re not Nazis,” Rumlow says, offended.

Sam stares at him, because for fuck's sake. “You really think I give a shit about the difference?”

“Fuck you, Wilson.” Rumlow stands to wash plates, taking Sam and Rollins' both. “Can’t believe your middle name is fucking Cornish,” Rumlow mutters, petty like it's the same as being Nazis.

“Like you can talk, Brock Andrea,” Rollins says without looking up from his tablet and for fuck's sake what even is this.

Rumlow socks Rollins in the arm and bullies Sam out of the kitchen to lock it up for the day and finish pulling on holsters and guns. Then they're out the door to the murder office, or whatever the fuck they do all day, and there's Sam left minding the store.

So that's that.

Because the thing about the Hydra Bed and Breakfast is that Sam's got nothing but time on his hands most days. Plenty of time to catch up on his reading, or his Netflix, or organizing his sock drawer, or basically fucking anything if he wasn't trapped in two small rooms instead of one.

So Sam got a hobby. And for the past few weeks, that hobby has been tearing the shit out of anything he can get his hands on and then putting it back together before Lucy and Ricky come home. The carpet's glued to concrete, so there's no tacks to pry up. The mattress on the floor is foam covered with plastic, so there's no springs to pull out and sharpen. The shitty little coffee table is solid MDF, so there's no tiny evil Ikea hex screws to pry out.

But the thing about couches, even shitty dorm room institutional ones, is that they do have springs, good ones of thick wire that are sharp as fuck if he could just get a piece of it bent enough to break free.

Gives him plenty of time to fantasize about how bloody it's going to be when he finally slits Rumlow's throat, which is probably not the healthiest coping mechanism, but Sam is starting to run out of fucks to give. He'll have plenty of time for healthy coping once they're out of this shit.

Clint and Nat are alive, they're in New York, and all Sam has to do is get to Bucky and get the fuck out of here. No big deal. Not like New York isn't the size of the moon with no car and no fucking clue where's safe to run or how to make contact with Clint and Nat. Jump the moat of burning alligators, rescue the damsel Bucky, ride into the sunset.

With his shoe laces and piece of sharp wire.

And that's why, about an hour after the twilight zone pancakes, Sam's got his arm stuck up the backside of the overturned couch when the door opens, because why the fuck not. It should be funny, Sam crouched like he's delivering a calf and Rumlow standing there poleaxed dumb, except for how fucking terrible it's going to go in about thirty seconds.

And for once, Sam's faster. He's on his feet before Rumlow's even moving, vaulting the couch in one motion to spin Rumlow and slam him face first against the closing door. The asshole goes into it with a satisfying crack of bone and whoosh of breath, and then Sam yanks his gun out of his holster and gets out of arm's reach.

Realizes it's a mistake before he even brings it up, because who walks around with a loaded gun and the stun baton's the real threat if all he's got is a dead chunk of metal, but Rumlow goes dead still anyway.

And Jesus Christ this is what he gets for fantasizing about slitting Rumlow's throat because this is not how he thought this would go and here he is with an empty gun to the back of Rumlow's head because his reflexes still want this to be normal combat and not some fucked up domestic prison wank fantasy.

Fucking useless.

“Put your hands up,” Sam says, because maybe. Maybe it's loaded, from the way Rumlow's standing there. If he can just get the stun baton and search the asshole's pockets for a key or a phone or something and get the fuck out of here, he can find Bucky and then he'll have backup. But he won't get anywhere if he gets close enough for Rumlow to grab the gun back. “I said put your fucking hands up,” Sam says again when Rumlow doesn't move, voice steadier than he feels.

“You don’t have the balls, Wilson,” Rumlow says, and the question hangs in the air. Can Sam shoot someone in the back of the head.

Sam pops the clip open, and of course.

Of course it's not loaded, because fuck his life.

Rumlow rounds on him with a sweeping kick as Sam wraps a hand around the clip and uses it to punch him in the kidneys. Sam keeps his feet and dances back out of reach, because fucking show off jarheads are all bark and no bite.

Sam's ready for him when Rumlow tries to fake him out, blocking and clipping him in the mouth when Rumlow thinks he's being smart and going for Sam's uncovered right. Rumlow wipes blood from his split lip on the back of his hand as Sam circles for a better angle. Rumlow favors his right, underestimates Sam's speed because he's a narcissistic asshole.

“You really think I'm fucking stupid enough to walk around with a loaded gun?” Rumlow says, offended like Sam called him a Nazi again.

“Coulda fooled me,” Sam says, and flips the gun in his hand to pistol whip Rumlow across the face. Rumlow staggers back, and God, he could actually do this, if he can just knock the asshole out. Sam closes in to punch him in the face again, but now Rumlow knows what's up, circling so he doesn't get backed against the couch.

“Brock, what the fuck's the hold—“ Rollins says from the door behind Sam, and that's it, it's over even though it was already over the second Sam grabbed the gun instead of the stun baton.

Sam rounds and whips the clip at his face, catches him in the nose with it before he can close the door and Sam bolts for it. Not much chance of making it, but better odds than being trapped in a small space with two against one.

He goes down on his face with barely a glimpse of the corridor, Rumlow tackling him by the legs. The gun goes skidding into the hall, empty for miles in either direction. He could still make it. He could still—

Sam kicks Rumlow in the teeth and staggers to his feet just in time for Rollins to catch him in the kidneys with a stun baton and close the door. Because of course not.

They pin him on his back before he stops convulsing, Rollins' knees crushing Sam's arms above his head and Rumlow's weight much too familiar. Rumlow shoves Sam's knees apart, and of course that's how it's going to go even though he can tell Rumlow's not hard yet.

“Don't like a fair fight so good, huh,” Sam pants before he can think too closely about that maybe Rumlow's not hard because it was a fair fight. Rollins chokes him with the length of the stun baton under his jaw, and Sam almost hopes he turns it on, just to fry Rumlow. Almost worth the inevitable brain damage of a couple thousand volts to the head, even if it means he'll never pay back Rollins for the fucking monkey comment.

They're not that stupid, though, all of Rollins' weight on Sam's hands and arms, the stun baton shoved out of the way as Rumlow puts a hand across his throat and leans in close enough to kiss. This is how Sam fucked Steve for the last time, Steve on his back with his head in Bucky's lap while Sam sucked dark bruises across his chest and God Sam does not want to think about anything that makes them alike because what if Rumlow fucked Steve like this too and Sam can't think about Steve during this. He can feel Rumlow's blunt nails digging into his neck and Rumlow's breath on his face and Rollins' knees against his temples and maybe he can just black out this time.

And what the fuck has happened to his life that he's hoping to be raped passed out instead of awake, Sam doesn't want to think about.

“You dumb cunt,” Rollins says, affectionate enough that it has to be for Rumlow, not Sam. “We're already fucking late.”

There's a long minute where Rumlow glares at Rollins and then Sam, and Sam has no fucking doubt that this wouldn't even be a question if not for Rollins. And also no doubt that Rollins wouldn't give a damn if they weren't late for whatever the fuck quarterly Nazi sensitivity training they have to get to.

Rumlow pushes off him just as Sam's vision starts to narrow, and he keeps it together just enough to kick one of them as they haul him up. They frog march him and toss him in the bare little bedroom, just like the good old days.

“You're a fuckin' pain in my ass, you know that, Wilson?” Rumlow says, punctuating it with a kick as Sam lands. “You're lucky,” he says with another kick, “we keep you around,” and another, “for your good looks,” and another, “and your sunny disposition.” Rumlow finishes with a kick to Sam's head that he barely dodges, rolling onto his back like he isn't flinching away. So he's lying on his back gasping past bruised ribs when Rollins bullies Rumlow out of there. “We have date, Wilson,” Rumlow says over his shoulder.

“Told you this was a bad idea,” Rollins says as the door closes, the lock clicking in place.

“You wanna sing the asset his lullaby every time he fucks himself up?” Rumlow snaps, pissy. “C'mon, Murphy's probably handing out PETA pamphlets by now.”

At least Sam's still got his shoe laces.  So much for pancakes and making small talk.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Cornish is for black abolitionist [Samuel Cornish](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Cornish)
> 
> \- Andrea is an Italian man's name but also I like Boy Named Sue Brock
> 
> \- if you're the anon on the meme who prompted a thing based on this, ILU. if you're the anon in my inbox who asked if they could write something set in this AU, ILU. go forth and make all the trash and link me so I can yell nice things at you.
> 
> \- go look at and say nice things about All_the_damned_vampire's beautiful Sam art of ch 1 linked at the very end of the fic


	8. After the Crime

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has . . . a lot of blood. sorry. but a longer version of the consensual bit at the beginning is up [on my tumblr.](http://a-social-construct.tumblr.com/post/126435517226/build-a-better-worlds-pretty-dark-atm-and-i-just)

Bucky wipes his mouth with the back of his hand as he sits up, looking like the cat that got the canary. Bucky eyes them both smugly, Steve panting against the mattress and Sam stroking his cock, close just from watching Bucky eating Steve out. Steve makes a petulant noise into the pillows and Sam slaps his ass to shut him up, squeezing his cute butt to make him squirm.

“Think he's ready?” Bucky asks, pushing two fingers into Steve, smooth and easy.

“Yes, c'mon, fuck me already,” Steve gasps. “Fuck, Sam, please—”

“Didn't ask you,” Bucky says, slapping Steve's pink ass.

The way Steve blushes, from the tips of his ears down to his pert ass, it always goes straight to Sam's dick, especially when Bucky slaps Steve around a little, leaving darker marks under the blush. Bucky's hand print stands out red under the blush, and that's it.

Sam shoulders Bucky out of the way, kissing his filthy mouth as Sam reaches around him to grab the lube. “Don't know if he is, but I sure as fuck am.”

Bucky laughs into Sam's mouth at that, dirty and delighted. Bucky ducks his head to mouth the head of Sam's cock as he pushes lubed fingers into Steve, a beautiful fucking distraction the both of them. Steve moans into it, pushing back on Sam's fingers and trying to rub himself off on the sheets and between the two of them Sam has to yank Bucky back by the hair before he comes, because Sam's not a horny twenty-five year old or a miracle of modern science and by God he's going to fuck at least one of them but not if he comes in Bucky's smug mouth.

Bucky backs off with his self-satisfied little smirk, but not without trying to kiss up Sam's chest and neck because no one rushes James Barnes when he's pleased with himself. Steve whines and twists on Sam's fingers, trying to watch them and fuck himself at the same time.

Sam finally shoves Bucky away with one last kiss, because he needs it almost as bad as Steve even if Bucky's determined to drive them both to distraction. He rubs the head of his cock against Steve's lubed ass as Bucky settles with Steve's head in his lap, and Steve's a shivery, sensitive mess already.

Steve pants into Bucky’s thigh, open and slick from Bucky’s tongue in him as Sam pushes into him. Bucky lays back, that smug bastard, with Steve’s head on his thigh and metal hand on his own dick, just watching Sam roll his hips into Steve. They're beautiful and all Sam's, Steve blissed out on the endorphins he only gets from adrenaline and fucking, all that lazy muscle pliant under Bucky's hands and Sam can almost see the little guy Steve would have been, wiry muscle letting himself get pulled back and forth between them.

“Fuckin' lazy,” Bucky says, carding fingers through Steve's hair. “You making us do all the work?”

Steve rolls his head on Bucky's thigh to smile up at him dopily, arching his back into it when Sam drags fingers down the back of his thighs. Bucky pulls his hair, Steve hiding his face against Bucky's thigh and moaning, tight and hot on Sam's cock as he pushes back.

* * *

Sam startles awake into the bright light of his nightmares, suffocating with the ceiling dropping down on him, waking up sweat soaked and shaking like he hasn't in years.

“Pleasant dreams?” Rumlow asks from the door with coffee in hand, one eyebrow raised at Sam’s obvious morning wood, and Sam can't even make himself snap something back. Too tired of this shit to tell the asshole to go fuck himself, because what good does it even do. This is what depression feels like, he tells himself from the outside, and still can't quite make himself care. It's been a day or two, maybe, Sam's lost track dozing in the dark with the door locked from the outside. It'd been practically a vacation, except that he didn't have anything to eat and had plenty of time to exhaust himself imagining date night.

“C'mon,” Rumlow says, kicking the medbag across the floor at him. “Time to go see icyhot.”

Rumlow doesn't lay a hand on him as they walk, and that's almost the worst he could do, because it means he knows Sam well enough by now to know that the waiting is worse. Sam tries not to clutch the medbag to his chest, like he can will this into being just a normal time if he clicks his heels together three times.

Except that the chorus line is all ready for the big number, and Sam knows better than to get his hopes up as Rumlow goes to open Bucky's cell.

“This is a fuckin' waste of time,” Rollins says, blocking him. “Put a bullet in his head and get it over with.”

Rumlow steps into his space at that, terrier to a greyhound and the hair on the back of Sam's neck prickles. The rest of the strike team watches them, a little too blood in the water for Sam's liking because Rumlow might be a sadistic asshole but he's the sadistic asshole who's been keeping Sam alive this whole time and what the fuck happens to Sam without him. He can't rescue anyone if he's dumped in a shallow grave.

“You got something to say about how I'm running this team,” Rumlow says, “you can file it under I don't give a shit and take it to HR, _LT_.” And Jesus Christ Sam doesn't want to know why Hydra HR sounds like such a threat but even he gets the implication, if not the detail.

Rollins looks like he's going to say something, the rest of the team strung taught around them, and the last thing Sam needs is to get caught in the middle of this fucking power struggle because he has a pretty good idea of who the first casualty of this little coup will be, and it's not Rumlow. Rollins looks Rumlow up and down and then—for just a second—he makes eye contact with Sam.

Then he drops it, stepping back with a little eyeroll at Rumlow.

“Fuckin' thought so,” Rumlow says, but even he's not dumb enough to believe that's the end of it, Sam can tell from the way he eyes Rollins sideways and doesn't let him get as close as usual. Not so cozy in the birdcage when everyone's swinging their dicks around.

Rumlow taps open the door with his keycard, and it's worse than Sam was expecting. He shouldn't expect anything anymore, except that fantasies are the only thing that let him sleep at night and maybe one day he won't be able to tell the difference and he'll finally be happy again.

Bucky's strung up naked in the middle of the room, arms cuffed behind his back and hoisted to the ceiling so he's on tiptoes with his right arm out of joint. He snarls and jerks towards Rumlow when the door opens, and even Sam flinches back. His right shoulder is a livid purple red from where his arm was pulled out of joint, all his weight throw forward even though Sam can see his left strained around the cable trying to take his weight. Bucky twists and pulls himself against it and they'll all be dead in a minute if he breaks it.

Except that Rollins walks right up to him and slaps him across the face, and Bucky's head snaps to the side. He shakes it off and tries to bite after Rollins about three seconds too late, and now that Sam's looking at him, his eyes are glassy and slow, doped up on whatever they have Sam inject him with.

“Here's how it is, Wilson,” Rumlow says, crossing the room to Bucky in three steps and leaving Sam to stand in the doorway with the rest of the Nazis. Rumlow takes a little utility knife out of his pocket and flicks it open, Bucky flinching violently at the sound and Sam hates what that says about what else they've done to him. “We've tried doing this the nice way. But if you're not going to play ball, we'll do things the not-so-nice way.”

Bucky knows what's coming before Sam does, throwing his weight and trying to kick Rumlow's feet out from under him, but Rumlow's faster and he twists a hand in Bucky's hair, yanking his head back. Bucky's throat works, glassy eyes blown wide and flicking back to Sam like Sam can get them out of this.

“So here's the deal,” Rumlow says, pleasant and reasonable. He trails the knife down Bucky's chest, a thin bright line of blood welling up under it and Bucky vibrates with how taut he is, from the pain or what comes next, Sam can't tell. Rumlow takes his hand out of Bucky's hair and snaps his fingers to bring Sam's attention back to him. “You make trouble,” Rumlow says, and cuts a shallow line under Bucky's right collarbone, “and you get to give your fridged boyfriend some more stitches.” In one motion he stabs the little utility knife into Bucky's dislocated right shoulder, jerking his weight so that Bucky's off his feet, all his weight on his right shoulder as he thrashes. Rumlow catches him by the hair again, forcing Bucky still. Rollins circles around to steady Bucky, hands on his naked hips, and that's as much of a threat as anything else.

Bucky breathes heavily through his teeth, eyes white all the way around like a spooked horse. He's taut with pain, except Sam's seen him walk off worse, both as the soldier and as himself. Rumlow yanks the knife out of Bucky's shoulder and pats Bucky's cheek, Rollin's fingers tightening on the muscle of Bucky's thigh like Steve's used to. “Yeah, now you remember me, don't you, baby,” Rumlow says.

Because—God have mercy, Bucky's getting hard from this. And Sam knows, knows with absolute certainty, that it's the pain, the fear, the conditioning, all of those things, but there's a little part of him that can't help feeling disgusted and betrayed and it's not Bucky's fault but Sam can't help it either because why can't anything be normal here. Sam's ears ring and his skin goes sick hot-cold and he can feel the edges of a panic attack closing in, because why not. Why not let them turn him against Bucky, why not let them hurt Bucky, who'll just heal up from it and won't remember it anyway, why not let them win.

Why not just drink their beer and eat their pancakes.

“This last stunt, though,” Rumlow says thoughtfully, pulling the knife out of Bucky's shoulder with a wet, sick noise. He looks at the knife, wipes both sides of it on Bucky's shivering thigh below Rollins' hands. “Pulling a gun like that, one of you needs to get fucked over just as good, remind you what you're fucking around with. Your call, though, you or him.”

Someone snickers behind Sam, and it doesn't really matter who. Because it doesn't make any sense, that they need Sam to keep Bucky patched up but they'll mutilate Bucky like this. It's circular logic and Sam can't pull the threads of it past the ringing in his ears. Bucky's disposable and Sam's a liability and none of it makes any fucking sense.

“Nice thing about the asset,” Rumlow says like he can hear Sam thinking, “he heals up so fast you can fuck up as much as you want and he'll be good as new to get his liver eaten out again the next day.” He jams the knife back into Bucky's shoulder and twists it, leaning weight into it and Rollins holds Bucky steady as he thrashes against the cable cuffing him to the ceiling. Blood wells up over Rumlow's hand, thick and slow.

“Like Icarus,” Murphy says helpfully behind Sam.

“Sisyphus, dumbass,” Westfahl says. Mercer and Anders make annoyed noises.

“Prometheus, you morons,” Rumlow says without looking away from Sam. “So what's it going to be, Wilson?” He drops the knife on the floor, kicking it across to Rollins so that he can drag a hand through the blood running down Bucky's side, coating his hand in it before he strokes Bucky's cock. Bucky shudders, eyes screwed tight shut like he can will himself out of there. “Blood's not very good lube, though.”

Sam stands there dead stupid still because if he moves or takes a breath he'll pass out, the floor heaving wildly under him and everything tunneling down to just this. All he can feel is a gun in the small of his back and the hot prickle of sweat all down his back and sides, choking on the smell of Bucky's blood and this obscene shared torture.

“Alright,” Rumlow shrugs, turning back to Bucky. Rumlow slaps him across the face, leaving a smeared bloody handprint. “Suck,” he says, shoving his bloody fingers in Bucky's mouth, and Bucky does, gagging and eyes rolling wild but obedient.

“You win,” Sam says, choked and deaf past the ringing in his ears. “Leave him alone, I'll do it,” Sam says, without letting himself think about what he's agreeing to because if he thinks about it he won't be able to say it and his own voice sounds far away enough already. “You win, that's what you want, right? Leave him alone.” Because that's all this is; it's personal, it's about power, it's about making Sam obedient too.

Not just obedient; consenting.

Not even Bucky has to consent. This is torture and it's meant to break him and it's working.

Rumlow gives Rollins a smug look and they close in on Sam together, flanking him so clearly that he staggers back against Murphy or Westfahl or Mercer, doesn't really matter which because Bucky's watching him horrified and it's Sam's turn to close his eyes tight and try to will himself out of there.

There's lube, this time. Sam hates when there's lube. It's almost the worst part except Bucky won't stop screaming, thrashing against the cable hooking him to the ceiling and Sam can't even hear him past the ringing in his ears.

He loses track of them except for Rumlow, who doesn't lay a hand on him because he doesn't have to. Rumlow leans against the wall and just watches Sam fondly. It's almost a relief, the cold clarity of watching it outside himself compared to the hot-sick panic of being trapped by his own choices.

They sedate Bucky afterwards, cutting the cable so that he staggers cuffed to the floor, woozy and sick as Sam feels. But Bucky keeps his feet under him even with the drugs, throwing himself off balanced at Rumlow, snarling and vicious. Rumlow kicks Bucky's feet out from under him, yanking his head up by the hair before he can land on the floor, forcing him to look at Sam, and they make eye contact for the first time.

And Sam looks away first, because he's a coward and if he lets himself see all the despair in Bucky's eyes, they'll never get out of this. Even if Clint and Nat are alive, what good does it do them. Bucky couldn't get out in seventy years; why would Sam be able to get them out of the next seventy.

They give him the medbag back once Bucky's out, and Sam irrigates the stab wound with steady hands, because what else can he do. Sam hesitates over the dislocated shoulder because it's not safe with Bucky still in cuffs, but Rollins steps in before he can do anything about it, putting a boot on Bucky's chest and yanking Bucky's right arm back into socket with a wet noise. It doesn't make any sense, that they need Sam to keep him patched up when Bucky's just disposable and he's going to make himself crazy trying to figure out Nazi logic.

They ignore him all the way back to the little apartment, disappearing back to whatever it is they do all day besides torture and rape. Fill out paperwork, probably. Sam hopes it's a shit ton of paperwork. The kind that has to be filled out four different ways for three different offices.

He doesn't sleep, exactly, while they're gone, but he doesn't exactly do anything either, sitting against the wall with his mind catching on and trying to skitter past what just happened. His stomach lurches and the floor threatens to heave up at him when he moves, so he doesn't until he hears the door opening and he makes himself stagger to the bathroom because he hasn't showered and the thought of not is suddenly too much with the two of them back in the tiny little space. He barely notices the smell of the shampoo anymore and they leave him alone except for the hot flash of panic Rumlow gives him when he steps in to grab something once Sam's in the shower, but then he's gone.

Normalest shit in the world. It's not until Sam's toweling off that he realizes Rumlow grabbed his bloody clothes off the floor, because why not add another layer of humiliation to all this. It's about power and control, that's all.

Rollin's arm is thrown over the back of the couch (a new couch, a couch that doesn't have springs to pull out) behind Rumlow, and they're not exactly cuddling but they're not not cuddling either and Sam wants to just lie down and cry at the absurdity of it.

His clean clothes are folded neatly on the mattress in the little bare room like a gift, he can see it from the bathroom, and to get to them he has to cross the living room behind the couch. In just a towel. The hot raw edge of the panic attack looms up, threatening to pull him under again but he can't let it. It's four steps to the safety of the door and clean clothes and never thinking about this nightmare ever again.

They did it just to fuck with him, because they don't pay him any attention as he crosses the room. Just watch the football game, and Sam can't even focus enough to catch who's playing, because when did walking across a room turn into such an ordeal.

He should just let it go. Let them win, slink behind the imaginary safety of his door that doesn't lock and not pick at the wound while it's still raw.

“You're a child molester,” Sam says to Rumlow's back from the marginal safety of the door, his throat raw and his whole body throbbing because he can't just let it go. Why not drink their beer and eat their pancakes.

“The fuck did you just say.” Rumlow twists around on the couch, face blank and nothing like offended when Sam called them Nazis.

“You heard me,” Sam says. Bulling forward on latent adrenaline, looking for a fight. “You get off on hurting someone who can't fight back, get to feel like a big man with him drugged up and doing what he's told. That's fucking pedophile shit.” It's not the same, not really, but it's not rape either, not like it is for Sam. At least Sam gets the privacy of his own mind, if not the privacy of his own body. That's why all the fucking charades, because it's about power and Sam gets a choice of whether to go along.

Rumlow looks him up and down, thinking that over. “You know what, Wilson? Say whatever the fuck you want. Because it doesn't fucking matter what you think. Sweet dreams,” Rumlow says, turning back to the game, Rollins laughing without even acknowledging Sam.

Didn't make it sugar, playing by the rules.

 


	9. To Bring Order

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This has a very brief description of Steve's death about halfway through.

Rumlow and Rollins are gone for longer stretches after that, which should be great except that it means that Sam goes hungry if neither of them comes back for days on end or Rollins just doesn't fucking feel like bringing back dinner for Sam when Rumlow's not around. It's petty, like not watering the roommate's plants, except Sam's the wilting basil with increasingly bad headaches and low energy. At least in the early days he never went hungry, and when he gets out of this he's going to leave a scathing review on the Hydra B&B Yelp page. Terrible service, worse decor. Would not recommend to a friend. ****

Rollins barely acknowledges him when Rumlow's gone, and Sam mostly returns the feeling. Except that Rollins makes his skin crawl worse than Rumlow, because at least that crazy fucker wants Sam alive and if he's gone long enough Rollins might just take matters into his own hands. They'll fight about it, sure, but then they'll kiss and make up and Sam'll still be dead.

Rumlow makes a grand entrance after two nights gone going on the third, and Sam would be glad to see him except he's got nothing to eat and whatever's keeping them so busy has to mean someone's giving Hydra trouble. Has to, or Sam has no reason to not just lie down and die. Rumlow breezes in with more beard than normal looking like hell, tapping open Sam's door on his way to throwing shit at Rollins in the other bedroom, where they've been mutually ignoring each other the past few days.

“You, get dressed,” Rumlow snaps at Rollins, tossing a pair of boots at him and snapping his fingers at Sam. “You, get the bag.”

“Kinda busy,” Rollins says from the door, phone in hand and looking deeply unimpressed.

Rumlow hauls Sam into the living room by the arm and glares at Rollins; being this close is at least normal levels of unbearable when they're not both paying attention to him. “Delta fucked up the playdate and the asset's gone non-compliant.”

“Well, fuck,” Rollins says, and starts pulling on jacket and boots.

Rumlow blindfolds him for it, but they're in enough of a hurry that they don't bother spinning him in circles or anything, and Sam tries to keep track of the turns because they clearly don't want him to know where they're taking him. Not much sound to figure it out and it means trusting Rumlow and Rollins not to walk him into any doors, but the air goes cold and the floor goes rough under Sam's bare feet because they're hurrying him to a fucking parking garage. The sound of their boots opens up under the concrete and there's the smell of cold motor oil and Sam's heartbeat kicks up because Christ this is the way out, if he can just remember all the turns and get Bucky out with him.

They pile him into the backseat of something, a big fuckoff SUV from the height of it, and whoever's driving peels out of there without waiting to buckle up, throwing Sam against the door. He feels for the locks first, because if he can just tuck and roll maybe he can find Bucky on his own, but of course Hydra got the child safety locks.

And it's cold, fucking cold enough Sam's feet hurt against the carpeted floor. He braces himself against the door and tries not to let his teeth chatter, back stiff from the rough road and the cold. It's an awful lot of work to drag him around like this just to dump him in a shallow grave, but Sam wouldn't put it past them to do it for shits and giggles. He wraps an arm around his chest with the other braced against the door; it can't be much past Halloween but it's fucking freezing in just a tshirt and scrub pants, not even some damn socks.  
The medbag bounces to the floor and Sam gropes after it, flinching when Rumlow tosses it back at him. “It's not that cold. Pussy medics,” Rumlow says, and throws a—throws a fucking coat at him, and it smells like Rumlow and Rollins. Sam holds it in his hands, trying to decide between his pride and the cold.

The cold wins out, because what if Bucky's non-compliant enough that they can make a break for it, steal the car and get the fuck out of there. Sam shoulders it on despite Rollins' gokart driving and the smell of Rumlow, trying not to think about wearing Rumlow's clothes and hoping that Bucky will recognize Sam and not the jacket.

The car screeches to a halt and Sam gets yanked out, and there's at least some of Delta still around, he can see the lights of other cars through the blindfold. Wherever the fuck they are, Sam's stumbling over branches and rocks, bare feet hurting. He could run through this if he had to, but it wouldn't be pleasant. There's at least five other guys besides Rumlow and Rollins if Sam's counting voices right. Not great odds for making a break for it.

Rumlow and Rollins propel Sam along with one on each side, hands on his elbows so Sam has to clutch the medbag in the middle of his chest like the world's saddest gay wedding. The rest of the wedding party is shifty, on edge, and Sam doesn't like the thought of being in the middle of nowhere surrounded by nervous Hydra goons with itchy trigger fingers.

“Hey, freezerburn, you remember your comfort blanket?” Rumlow calls, stopping them. Sam can't hear Bucky, and that's probably not good.

They take his blindfold off, and Jesus Christ Hydra’s been keeping them in the motherfucking upstate Avengers facility all this time. Bucky's huddled in the dark corner of a ruined stone foundation on the far edge of state forest that got taken over, where the bowl of the valley starts lifting into the Adirondacks. The sky's dark and low, clouded over and threatening snow, but he can make out the horizon past trees starting to go bare for the winter.

Sam keeps his eyes on Bucky, to keep from giving it away that he recognizes anything after they went to all that work to keep him from knowing where they are, but the line of the ridge can’t be anywhere else, he’s flown it dozens of times. They dragged him around long enough so he can’t quite figure out which entrance they came out of, but they didn’t come far enough for the facility to be anywhere else.

Motherfuckers.

It fits together in his head now that he knows, like he’s been trapped on the wrong side of the mirror too long. All this fucking time and he knew exactly how to get out, if he wasn't so convinced of his own uselessness. Now it's just a matter of all the locked doors.

And Bucky's obviously broken femur.

Sam pulls away from Rumlow and Rollins, and they let him, covering the door with guns drawn and the other strike team behind him. No way out but up the broken stone walls, and maybe if Bucky were in a condition to stand they could make it, but not today. Doesn't matter.

Bucky must have dragged himself into a half-remembered hiding spot, because even he can't get far on a broken leg. He’s slumped in the corner of the stone foundation, face turned into the wall, but he shivers when Sam sets his bag down in the far corner.

“You okay, Bucky?” Sam asks, because sometimes that works, just the sound of his voice, or maybe Bucky’s name, Sam’s not sure which but neither seem to hurt.

Bucky fixes on him with a shuddery intake of breath, broken machinery coming to life. “Sam? Sam, Jesus, they got you too—“ he says, and tries to claw himself up the wall. Sam can’t tell if Bucky’s trying to get away from him or come after him, but he's going to go into shock soon and the leg needs to get set. Bucky collapses back down into his corner, trapped and breathing hard with the broken leg, and Sam fights to keep his own breathing even so he can think and do triage.

Somebody’s clearly beaten the shit out of Bucky recently, hand prints faintly visible around Bucky’s neck, and of course Rumlow's word wasn't worth anything. His cheek and eye socket are swollen enough that his cheekbone might be broken to match Sam's almost healed face. They can get matching tshirts too when this is over. _I survived Hydra summer camp and all I got was_ _this tshirt,_ _my boyfriend,_ _and terrible psychological trauma_.

“Bucky, it’s okay,” Sam says, even though it’s not, staying low and keeping his hands open, because Bucky’s breathing is spiraling into full on panic attack mode and Sam can't get trapped in here with a panicked Winter Soldier and nervous trigger fingers at his back. “I’m okay, I need you to breathe with me—“

“They got Steve,” Bucky says, and this isn’t a panic attack, it’s wet, messy crying and Sam suddenly can’t hear him over the pounding of blood in his own ears. “They got him, they put him in the chair, they—Sam, they—they’re gonna—“

“Bucky, I need you to look at me. Take a deep breath.”

“Did they—did they put you in the chair too? Do you remember me?” Bucky begs, because they're not just trapped in Groundhog Day, they're trapped in the evil mirrorverse version.

Would to God Hydra would take pity and rescue Sam from Rumlow's sadistic little doll house, and isn't that the most selfish thing he could wish for in the face of Bucky's panic attack.

Sam creeps closer on his hands and knees, trying not to think about that. They might not be getting anywhere tonight, but Bucky still needs him and he needs to keep Bucky focused. Bucky reaches for him, snatching Sam off balance like he's finally registered Rumlow and friends watching them, snarling at them over Sam's shoulder.

Sam puts hands on Bucky's face, trying to pull his focus back. Much as Sam wants to, they can't make a break with Bucky's leg broken and no one's going anywhere if they get shot. “Bucky, look at me. You're okay, I'm okay, they haven't done anything to me.” Relatively speaking, anyway. “We're going to get out of this, but I need you to focus and let me take a look at your leg, okay?”

“But Steve's—we have to get Steve—“

“Steve’s dead, Bucky,” Sam says, and hates himself for the frozen, shocky look that goes over Bucky’s face as he remembers. Sam can’t not remember, Steve going down trying to cover Bucky before Sam could get to them and Bucky howling his rage over Steve’s corpse, swinging the shield until they were swamped by Hydra. If he'd been stronger, he could have pulled Bucky out of there, but Bucky wouldn't leave the corpse and Sam wouldn't leave Bucky, so here they are.

Sam wakes up most nights trying to convince himself it wasn’t real too, that Steve’s still alive and coming to get them, and he knows the look on Bucky’s face too well because sometimes the fiction is the only thing keeping him going through the night. “We were there,” Sam whispers, petting Bucky's hair because he's sentimental and needs the comfort himself. “You saw the body. Steve’s dead.”

“They made him into me,” Bucky sobs, not bothering to be quiet. “They’re gonna—Sam, they made him into me, you have to get out of here.”

“Bucky. Bucky, it’s okay. We’re going to get out, I promise I’ll get us out of here.”

“Enough necking, Wilson,” Rumlow says from the door, and Rollins steps in far enough to kick the medbag at him. “Dope him up.”

“I have to set his leg,” Sam says, because if it's bad enough sedating Bucky when he's not himself, it'll be worse like this.

“You're not setting his fucking leg by yourself, don't shit me. Put him under or I'll tase him and do it myself.”

Bucky tries to push himself standing again at that, face twisted like he could just bite Rumlow's throat out, and maybe he could. There's the sound of safetys being clicked off, and Sam pulls Bucky back down as gentle as he can.

“It's okay, Bucky, it's okay,” Sam says, making Bucky look at him again. Keeps his voice down, because they can't afford anything else. “We can get out of this, I know where we are. As soon as you're walking, we'll get a key and steal a car and we'll get out of here. Okay? But I need you to cooperate right now so you can heal up.”

Bucky shakes his head and closes his eyes but he doesn't fight it when Sam gets the syringe and taps his veins to the surface. And no, Sam wouldn't really be able to set the leg by himself and handing Bucky back over to Hydra surgeons is the worst of bad options, but what other choice does he have. He can't fight off seven armed guys barefoot and carrying Bucky.

“They got you too,” Bucky says as he goes under, and yeah, maybe they did.

 


	10. Just a Matter of Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter that didn't fit well with the previous or next chapter. Some slight snarkiness about vegans, sorry.

Even with the way Bucky heals, it's going to be at least another month or two before he can walk well enough to make a break for it. Maybe less if Hydra puts more metal in Bucky's leg and pumps him full enough of drugs that he can walk through the pain and wouldn't that be a great Christmas present, getting out of here early because of Hydra's generosity.

They let him keep the jacket, and Sam must not be a house elf because it doesn't do a damn thing, even when he gets a pair of socks in the next load of clean laundry. It doesn't make much sense why until Murphy and Anders get detailed to drag him out to Bucky's physical therapy in the part of medical that's always been as cold as a meat locker.

Anders could break Sam in half, Sam doesn't doubt it, but Murphy's just a kid. And a dumb, idealistic kid like Sam had been, at that, because he takes one look at Sam's wool socks the first day and trots back to his room to grab a pair of his own bamboo silk socks, Anders huffing her annoyance in the hallway.

Sam puts them on, because Murphy's an idealistic kid and maybe he can use that. “Thanks, I appreciate it,” Sam says, and fumbles around for what comes next, because when was the last time he talked to someone who wasn't Bucky or Rumlow. “Man, what are you, twenty, twenty-two?”

“Twenty-six,” Murphy says stiffly, and fuck Sam is getting old and he misses Nat, for so many reasons. Not least of all because she could break this kid in two with a look.

“Sorry, look, when I was—“

“Commander Rumlow said not to listen to you,” Murphy sniffs, and that's that, Anders tells them to get a move on from the hallway.

And if Sam thought the VA's PT was bad, Hydra's is worse, a combination of leg lifts and non-theraputic electric shock. That's Sam's life, then, the companion pony to Bucky's spooked race horse, and Sam just has to hope Hydra's patient enough to not send Bucky to the glue factory on this broken leg. Murphy and Anders cuff him to the wall of the PT facility in medical where Bucky can see him and it's fine, but God, why did they have to install a D bolt for handcuffing someone to the wall even in PT. Why does everything about Hydra have to be so . . . Hydra.

The vertigo of being in a familiar place isn't as bad as watching football with Rumlow, but Sam spends his days trying to piece together the last time he was here for non-evil PT, and his world's gotten so narrow in the last five months he can barely remember it. When Steve threw out his shoulder, maybe, when they were first getting an idea of how deep Hydra'd sunk its claws into the new Shield but hadn't been on the run yet. Or was it Sam's shoulder that had gotten strained? He sits in his corner and tries to think past the stress headache and grumbling stomach and the thousand other little selfish pains crowding his attention.

And God, how bad must he look that even Bucky pities him, bringing Sam his bowl of mush to share, because apparently even Bucky gets a union lunch break. Bucky doesn't know him from Adam as blasted as he is on whatever drugs they've pumped him full of, but he cuddles up to Sam and snarls at the Nazi physical therapists who get too close and won't eat until Sam eats something.  Like when Sam babysat and DeShawn would only eat spaghetti-os bite for bite with him, except a thousand times worse.

They've got Bucky on some kind of antipsychotic, probably. He's a little jaundiced and pale, more spacey than his vacant usual. It's not so visible from across the room, but when Bucky sits next to him to eat, Sam can see him shaking like an old man, tremors in his hands and movements as they put him through his paces. The withdrawal's going to be a bitch. Hopefully Hydra at least does drugs normal and it's not in the food. Though maybe Sam would be happier if he could just be doped out of his mind all the time too, and he crushes that thought because he can't let resentment of Bucky become the background radiation of his life.

Sleep, comfort animal, eat, rinse, repeat. Murphy and Anders are at least marginally less unpleasant than Rumlow and Rollins. One star out of five, still would not recommend to a friend.  Would give a half star if possible because of shitty fascist ideology.

* * *

It's around Thanksgiving, according to the little scratches Sam keeps on the wall, when Hydra starts sending Bucky out again, and Sam snaps to attention when Murphy comes to get him and they head for the cells, not PT. It's too early, Bucky's got to be in pain, but maybe they've got him off the antipsychotics.

“C'mon, um, Sam. Ugh, it always smells like bacon in there,” Murphy sniffs, and yeah, Sam's hungry stomach has noticed even though Rumlow and Rollins are only around to cook and smoke about once a week these days. It's just Murphy, Anders nowhere to be seen. Depending on what shape Bucky's in, they could take Murphy, get his keys. Sam might feel a little bad, but the kid is practically Hitler Youth.

“You're vegan, right?” Sam says as they walk, because all he needs is an inch. Give a mouse a cookie.

“Yeah—yeah, are you too?” Murphy blanches. “They didn't make you eat it, did they? We'll tell Anders and she'll—“

“No, no, it's okay, they didn't make me eat anything,” Sam says, and Jesus Christ he does not understand Nazis or their priorities because this kid saw him get raped. Murphy walks briskly and Sam huffs to keep up, hating that Rumlow's slow, stiff walk had gotten familiar enough that Sam's gotten out of shape. “Look, it's just—it's cruel, you know, what they're doing to Bucky, I don't know how you square that with being vegan.”

Murphy rolls his eyes. “The asset's not a person, it's not the same.”

“I—yeah. Yeah, he is,” Sam says, because he wasn't prepared for this. Rumlow and Rollins' brand of sadism, sure, but Murphy says it like it's just a fact about the world. Vegans care about animals. Bucky is an animal. A scary, feral animal sometimes, but Sam'll pull on any thread he can get. “Isaac, right?” Sam says, swallowing his disgust away, because this kid has to care about something with how much Rumlow bitches about him. As though Rumlow hating someone makes them a good person. “He's a person, his name's James Barnes, his sisters are Esther and Rebekah, my sisters' names are Jessica and Brittany—”

“Brittany's dead, Wilson,” the baby Nazi says, blithe like he didn't just slap Sam across the face.

Brittany's not dead. Murphy wouldn't know that, wouldn't have any reason to know that except to fuck with Sam's head. Sam's been powering through this like he did Afghanistan, reminding himself that everyone back home is safe, except that's fucking selfish because Hydra's in charge and Sam's the reason they're not safe.

Brittany's not dead.

“And anyway,” Murphy says, oblivious, “I'm environmental impact vegan and people are bad for the environment.”

It shouldn't be such a gut punch, because it's not like Sam should have expected anything anyway. But just—how. How are there people like this in the world, and enough of them to find each other and take over the world. Sam couldn't find enough people for speed dating night at the VA. They walk the rest of the way in silence, because what can he say to that?

Brittany's not dead.

Bucky's shoved himself into his usual far corner, face twisted as he knuckles at his thigh above the break. His pants are shredded to the hip, gouged with roadburn or something else, all up the leg he just broke. Bucky or someone else patched him up with duct tape, blood oozing out from under it like he's got some deeper cuts. So not today.

He looks up at them and starts, wary, and Sam realizes he's wearing Rumlow's jacket. Sam shoulders it off in the doorway, dropping it on Murphy's feet. Bucky eyes him, some of the tension going out of him when Sam crouches just out of reach.

“Cut the tape off,” Bucky says, jerking his head for Sam to come closer. He breathes heavily through his nose, trying to keep his breathing under control but mostly all there. Sam hopes.

“How deep is it? Does it need stitches—“

“Just cut it off,” Bucky snaps, and Murphy looks up at them from the door. Making sure he doesn’t need to get his own ass out if Bucky snaps.

But Bucky settles as Sam cuts the tape away, Murphy going back to his phone. And—thank God. Thank God for Bucky and the bored baby Nazi, because Bucky’s got a keycard taped to his thigh, sticky with blood but wrapped well enough no one thought to look for it. Sam’s breath catches for half a second when he sees it, and then it’s gone, folded into the waistband of his pants before he can catch Murphy's attention. The bag is too dangerous, they might search it, but what happens if someone sees the blood or the card falls out of his waistband, because of course he’s got no pockets. Sam rubs his bloody hands on the front of his shirt, trying to disguise the smudges where he stuck the keycard.

Bucky watches him with hooded eyes and Sam wonders if he’s there as much as he seems. Sam chews his lip and concentrates on his stitches, because how does he even ask what it’s for without giving it all away.

“You remember that cabin we went to last winter?” Bucky says quietly, his normal low murmur, and Sam wills himself steady because that never happened.

“The one with all the mice?” Sam says, hoping he’s playing along right, hoping they’re reading from the same codebook. He’s not cut out for this shit.

“Yeah, that one. Infested. When Steve jumped on the kitchen table and screamed like a baby,” Bucky says with a smile, and Sam has to laugh, caught off guard because that had happened, just not in their make believe cabin. It hurts and it feels good all at the same time, talking about Steve with Bucky, like worrying at a broken tooth. Like there might be some relief for the pain after all, but not before it gets a hell of a lot worse.

“And you had to open all the doors to chase the mice out before he’d come down from the table,” Bucky says. He glances lazily at Murphy, and Sam's gut goes cold, because what if this goes down like last time and what if Sam can't even think anymore without Rumlow's reasonable voice in his head asking what it's going to be this time.

“Yeah,” Sam says, swallowing away something that feels like fear knotting in his throat. So that’s the plan, then. “Yeah, I remember it.”

“Be nice to go on vacation again sometime,” Bucky says, head tipped back against the wall with a smile on his lips. They've got a key, a location and a plan. They'll be out by Christmas and Sam'll see his mom and eat a steak and Brittany won't be dead.

Now they just need Bucky on his feet and all back to himself.

No big deal at all.


	11. Flick of a Switch

There's no rest for the wicked, because Rumlow staggers in right after Murphy deposits Sam safely back in the sadistic little dollhouse. Sam's still got sticky glue on his fingers from peeling up the carpet where he's hidden the shoelaces, the carpet wrinkling where he's dropped the keycard and hastily pressed it back down, pulse kicking up at the sound of the door. He never used to be so easily spooked, but he never used to get raped and tortured on the regular, either.  Sam sits on the wrinkled edge of carpet heavily to hide it, because he's got the world's worst poker face and his heart's beating loud enough that Rumlow has to hear.

But maybe Sam's going to catch a break for once, because Rumlow doesn't pay him any mind. Sam sits with his back against the wall and tries to look anything other than what he feels, which is strung out and terrified, watching Rumlow move stiffly in the other room.

Rumlow strips armor on his way from the door, dropping a shredded tac vest on his way to the kitchen. He brings back a beer without looking at Sam and flops onto the couch with his boots still on, dropping what looks like a pill bottle on the coffee table. He’s singed around the edges, sweat cutting tracks through blood and grime down his face. He smells like Bucky, like Sam’s stomach-flipping flashbacks of Afghanistan, all harsh burnt chemicals and blood even across the apartment.

Rumlow lies still for long enough that the blood starts to trickle down his scalp in a different direction, down over one temple and onto the couch steadily and showing no sign of clotting up soon. There’s blood visible soaking through his shirt, spreading. Torn up in whatever knocked Bucky off his feet again, he probably didn't walk off a gut wound, but he probably also isn't going to stop bleeding on the couch any time soon.

Sam goes to get his bag. It’s complicity, no way around it. But if Rumlow bleeds out in front of him, there’s no telling what Rollins will think of that, or what’ll happen to Sam then. He doesn’t want to think about it, about how long he’d last without the marginal buffer of Rumlow against Rollins and the rest, so Sam sets down his bag on the coffee table and pushes up Rumlow’s shirt to get a better look at where he’s bleeding. He just needs Rumlow to live long enough to let Sam live long enough to get Bucky back on his feet, and then Sam can slit Rumlow's throat himself. It’s no more complicit than anything else he’s done, and he’ll take responsibility for it when the time comes, along with the rest of it.

Rumlow rolls his head on the arm of the couch to look at him, muzzy with shock or blood loss while Sam rationalizes. It'd be so easy to kill him like this, just put hands around his throat and choke him.

Sam doesn’t look at him and doesn’t give a fuck about the hiss of pain when he dabs at the gut wound with damp gauze. Shallow but big, like something big and metal dragged across his chest, and maybe it looks like fingers. Enough to open up skin and muscle but not enough to hit organs, more’s the pity.

“You need stitches,” Sam says, because sticking a needle in Rumlow isn’t worth getting clocked in the nose if he’s not ready for it. Rumlow just nods and closes his eyes.

It’s hardly worth the hassle, because Rumlow just grits his teeth and takes it, jaw clenching and working to keep his breathing even as Sam stitches him up, trying to touch him as little as possible. He stinks like a car fire this close, all electricity and diesel and sick sweet burnt plastic. The stitches aren't neat, Rumlow's scars all puckered across his chest where the building fell on him, and Sam can't tell if he's pleased to add a mark to all that ugliness or disgusted that it'll just be one more thing that makes this horrible nightmare last forever.

Rumlow's scalp is only bleeding sluggishly by the time Sam’s done sewing him up, but Sam tapes some gauze over it and checks him for a concussion anyway. Slapping him a couple times to make him open his eyes is pretty satisfying, and sure enough, Rumlow’s going to be nursing a good headache for the next few months. Sam makes him drink a glass of water.

“Thanks,” Rumlow says, laying back against the arm of the couch with his eyes closed. “You’re pretty alright, Wilson.”

“We’re not friends,” Sam says, back stiff. He might be complicit, but he doesn’t have to like it.

Rumlow laughs wetly, clutching his torn up side without opening his eyes. “No, we’re sure as fuck not.” He fumbles the pill bottle off the coffee table and taps out two oxycontins onto his chest, washing them down with beer.

It’s quiet for a minute, but Sam can’t not say it, because Rumlow takes another drink and is clearly set on finishing the beer, and what’ll happen to Sam then. It’s a cowardly, desperate thought, and he hates himself for being so scared to find out. “That’s not smart, mixing those with alcohol on a concussion,” Sam says.

“Cause you give a shit if I drink myself to death,” Rumlow says, and Sam leaves him to it even though a puking overdose is the last thing he wants to deal with. A nightmare if it happens, and he hopes to God he doesn’t ever have to find out what Rollins is like without Rumlow.

Sam sits across the room and watches him finish the beer, waiting for his breathing to even out. If Bucky were walking, this would be it, the perfect chance to beat Rumlow's face in and get out of here.

Or Sam could just run for it himself. Take off, get help, come back for Bucky.

He thinks about it for longer than he should. Of Bucky cuffed to the ceiling without Sam to step in. Of Bucky wild and feral, putting anyone who tries to give him stitches through the wall until Hydra finally decides he's not worth the trouble. Of Bucky getting sent after Sam to finish it.

And Sam promised. Of all the things Hydra can make him, they can't make Sam Wilson a liar. He promised Bucky they'd get out of this together, so they will.

Rumlow drops off eventually, asleep or passed out, Sam doesn't really care. Sam goes through the pockes of the shredded tac vest as soon as he's sure, not hoping for much because Rumlow had the sense left to get rid of the stun baton and his holster's empty.

So Sam comes up with a handful of empty shell casings, a utility knife, and shaky hands, trying to rush in case Rollins comes to check up, trying to not sound like he’s rushing in case it wakes Rumlow up. The knife is the same one Rumlow used to cut up Bucky, a little three inch thing like the one Sam used to keep in the garden shed. And much as he never wants to see it again, there would be some poetic justice in using it to cut Rumlow's throat.

The utility knife is never going to fit with the keycard and the shoelaces under the peeled up carpet, so he spends the next half hour picking apart the inner seam of the med bag and carefully sewing everything into the lining with a suture kit. It’s dangerous, and he’s sick to his stomach going through the possibilities if he’s caught, but there’s nowhere else to hide it and nothing else he can be sure of having with him when he’s near Bucky. They’ll have one chance and Sam can’t risk the possibility of catching Bucky strong and clearheaded enough without the keycard on him.

So that’s what he’s got: shoe laces, a dead woman’s keycard, and a little three inch multi tool, and God help him if someone empties out the bag and wonders why it’s heavier than it should be. Sam regrets not paying better attention to MacGyver as a kid. He’s going to fight off an entire platoon of squid Nazis with a utility knife and a keycard that probably doesn’t work, and ride off into the sunset with his one armed murderbot damsel in distress.

It’ll be great.

* * *

Truly no rest for the wicked. Sam puts the medbag in one corner and tries not to stare at it or Rumlow visible through the door, because the temptation is almost too much. He could slit Rumlow's throat in his sleep, unlock the door and make for Bucky, except that Bucky's in no shape to walk and probably getting his brains fried about now. He should test the keycard, but if they haven't changed the software of Stark's stupid sliding robot doors, it'll log every use and they'll surely wonder why some dead woman is leaving Rumlow's apartment.

He sits there worrying at it, chewing a hangnail on the side of his thumb raw. Because he can think up as many excuses as he wants but the thing that really stops him is his own cowardice, and how'd he let it come to that. Except that the thought of going through it again when he fails, Bucky screaming and thrashing in that bright white light, Sam can't hardly face the thought of it even sitting safe alone in the dark with Rumlow vulnerable and passed out.

He sits there worrying over it so long the chance passes, Rollins storming in the door like a bad boyfriend. “Brock? Brock, where the fuck—“ Rollins catches up short in the door at the sight of Rumlow on the couch, but crosses the room to him in two steps. “Jesus Christ. Brock, you dumb shit, wake up.” Rollins kneels next to him and slaps him a couple times, and Sam stands to watch them from the door because whatever's coming next, he's going to face it standing up and it's going to be obvious who stitched Rumlow up anyway. “This is why I fucking told you to go to medical,” Rollins says.

“He's got a concussion,” Sam says from the door.

“Yeah, no shit,” Rollins snaps without even looking at him, still fussing over Rumlow.

“He took a couple of oxycontins with his beer, he's going to be hard to wake up. Should maybe get his stomach pumped.” Rollins finally looks up at him at that, for the first time since he told Rumlow to put a bullet into Sam's head. He crosses the room to Sam in two steps, slamming him against the wall.

“He took what,” Rollins snarls in his face.

“You heard me,” Sam says, because of course Rollins fucking heard him, why the fuck else would Sam be on tip toes.

“Why the _fuck_ did you let him do that?”

“Why did I let him?” Sam says, and he can't tell if he's laughing or yelling because what the actual fuck. “Why did _I_ let him? The fuck was I supposed to do?”

“Hey,” Rumlow slurs at from the couch, head lolled on the armrest. “Lay off. Wilson's alright.”

Rollins drops Sam like a bag of hot dogshit and goes back to Rumlow, making him sit up. He peels open Rumlow's eyelids, but his pupils are concussion-relative okay, not contracted from an overdose, even Sam can see from across the room. “You dumb cunt,” Rollins says, hauling one of Rumlow's arms over his shoulders, and Sam does not understand Nazi endearments. But then they're out the door and not Sam's problem anymore.

* * *

Except when will Rumlow and Rollins and the rest of the dance troupe ever not be Sam's problem, because Rollins comes rolling in a half hour later with the rest of the strike team at his back. He hauls Sam up by the collar again, and this is it, they know about the knife or the keycard or both, from the set, murderous look on Rollins' face. Sam can't push the shaking down this time, because at least last time Rumlow wanted him to live through it and Rollins doesn't look like he'll make it as quick as a bullet between the eyes now.

Rollins yanks him into the living room and the rest go to work without a word, the snick of their utility knives to match Rumlow's loud in the little room. Rollins throws Sam against the wall with Mercer smiling behind him, the back of Sam's head cracking and his stomach seizing around nothing. There's the sound of the mattress being stabbed and the medbag rattling across the floor, and Sam's heart stops.

And then the bag's kicked out the door, rolling to a stop in the middle of living room as they start to tear up the carpet of Sam's room.

They don't know.

Mercer gives Sam a flirty smile and snaps on latex gloves, and Sam beats the panic attack down because this is nothing but trying to break Rumlow's toys while he's in the hospital, it's not even about Sam. They don't know. No one saw him. They can't know and he can't give it away. He's got a terrible poker face and one day it's going to get him killed, but today doesn't have to be that day.

He stares at a fixed point in space over Mercer's head while Anders and Westfahl tear apart the mattress because he can't let on about the medbag or he's a dead man. Rumlow will probably be pissed when he gets out of the hospital, but not enough to bring Sam back from the dead. Rollins hauls him around to face the wall while Mercer closes in, and Sam can live through a cavity search too after everything, it's nothing but his dignity.

They don't know and he'll live through it and it'll be fine.

“The fuck is this?” Rumlow snarls from the door just as Mercer's got her hands on Sam's waistband and Jesus Sam never thought he would be so happy to see the rapist bastard.

Rollins turns to face him, shoulders square and mouth pressed thin like this is the hill he's going to die on. Sam breathes shallowly against the wall where Mercer keeps him pinned with one little hand in the small of his back, because Rumlow's not really a rescue and this could get much worse very quickly. Rumlow's not exactly steady on his feet from what Sam can see, still swaying on some pain killer or another, but at least he's vertical for now.

“We're searching the room,” Rollins says finally, like that's not fucking obvious.

“Yeah? And you find anything?” Rumlow says, and he's got the stun baton on now because why not make this just a little bit worse. He fingers it on his belt, eyes sliding past Sam to Rollins and the torn up chunks of mattress foam tossed into the living room, braced like he was expecting this.

Rollins stiffens, and maybe this is it, when Sam finds out what a coup looks like from intimately close because everyone's attention's on Rollins and his say so against Rumlow. “No, but—“

“Yeah, like I fuckin' told you,” Rumlow snaps, and everyone but Rollins deflates a little. “All of you, fuck off,” he says, and only Murphy and Anders look even a little contrite as they're shooed out of the apartment by the world's worst den mother. “Yeah, you too, Murtaugh and Riggs,” Rumlow spits at Sam and Rollins where they're both frozen in the living room, and that seems about right, the anti-semite and the activist, though Sam resents the implication that he would team up with Rollins even for a shitty action movie. Rumlow kicks the medbag back into the ruined bedroom, shoving Sam after it.

Rollins doesn't take the hint even as Sam makes a hasty retreat to the torn up little bedroom, Rollins stalking after Rumlow tottering into their bedroom. Sam sleeps sitting up in the remains of his foam mattress, listening to daddy and daddy fight about him on the other side of the door. He tries not to look at the incriminating med bag, because he has to get out of this fucked up little love triangle or his heart's going to give out if he gets another small favor like this.

 


	12. As You Really Are

There's no pancakes after that, but there's not a whole fuck of a lot else either. Rumlow must get put on medical leave because he spends his days pissing around the little apartment making Sam miserable, and God Sam regrets not just letting him bleed out because he's worse than Steve with the restlessness thing. Rollins knocks him on his ass a couple mornings to make him stay down, and Sam doesn't tell them that maybe fistfights aren't the best cure for a concussion because he's not a fucking doctor, _you fucking pussy medic_ and one day Sam will stop hearing Rumlow's voice in his head.

Probably the same day he stops having nightmares mixing up Steve and Bucky and Rumlow, getting lost in bright white corridors that he should know and running head first into Steve with dead eyes and Bucky's arm, Bucky dragging Sam back down to that white lit cell and leaving him there until he can't tell if it's Bucky or Steve or himself screaming.

Sam tries not to think about it, because if he lets himself think about the nightmares he'll never work up the courage to do it, and how is he going to live with himself if the thing that keeps him trapped here forever is his own fear.

It's fine. He's fine. Or he's going to be fine, which is the same as fine.

If being Bucky's companion pony was bad enough, being Rumlow's is even worse because he doesn't fucking sit still. Sam's routine is: yoga, work out, stretch down, brood, work out, brood. Rumlow's routine is: nap, brood, pace, bitch, brood, eat, pace, nap, brood, bitch, bitch, bitch. Sam sits in his corner on best behavior slowly going up the fucking wall listening to him because God Almighty if Rumlow laid a hand on him Sam could kick his ass but as it is he just bitches about how crap the weather is and how crap Rollins is at everything, as if Sam actually gives a damn and isn't trying to glare a hole in the side of Rumlow's head.

The message finally registers somewhere around the two week mark, when Rumlow finally settles into a sulky routine of fucking around on his phone instead of talking Sam's ear off, and thank God for it. Sam's eviscerated mattress disappears and never gets replaced, someone's petty revenge. And maybe he could take the sadism, but the petty assholery is what does it, because why. Like Sam wouldn't get that they run the world and killed everyone he loves if he didn't sleep on carpet glued to concrete, like it even matters what Sam thinks.

So he's halfway through quad sweeps when Rumlow snaps his fingers from where he's laying on the couch texting and being a lazy asshole. “Well fuck,” Rumlow says to his phone. “C'mon, Dr. Huxtable, you're not gonna like this.” He heaves himself up off the couch favoring his stitches, and all Sam can see is how bad he wants to break Rumlow's teeth in for calling him a rapist because what the fuck.

The walk to Bucky's cell is longer than it should be, because it's the first house call since Sam got the knife, and the little bounce in Rumlow's step despite his stitches says that this is probably not going to be a great day for Sam. Rollins and a couple of spooked looking labcoats wait for them, and Sam crushes the stupid hope that Bucky's gone non-compliant again because when has anything ever gone that well.

The door opens and Bucky’s there, pacing like a caged tiger. He rounds on the open door in one smooth motion, pure Winter Soldier, and Sam backs into Rumlow’s chest in his panic to get away.

“That’s not—he’s not—“

“Your problem,” Rumlow says, and gives Sam a hard shove and a kick in the back of the knees that sends him sprawling on the floor. “Calm him down.”

The door gets closed before he’s on his feet, dancing away from Bucky’s hunting prowl. Sam trips over his bag trying to stay out of reach, trying to keep himself from getting cornered because it’ll be all over then, no way he can fight Bucky off if he gets trapped with his back to the wall. The room isn’t big enough to stay out of his reach for long and Sam will tire and trip up way before Bucky does and Bucky knows it.

Or, the Winter Soldier knows it, pacing him with head down and shoulders swinging, trying to crowd him in the narrow cell so that Sam has to either back himself into the wall or risk getting close enough for Bucky to grab in order to try to dodge.

Bucky slams him against the wall, but it's more sound than force, Bucky's knuckles ringing on the concrete wall and Sam gulps down his last breath. This is not how this is supposed to go, Bucky knew him, Bucky got the key and Sam got the knife, this is not how this is supposed to go—

Sam knees Bucky in the balls but he barely notices, shaking Sam against the wall as he leans in like he's just going to bite Sam's throat out. “You ready?” Bucky breathes into his ear, and then throws Sam across the room.

And Jesus Christ, ready for what because that sounded like Bucky on his good days but Sam cracks against the wall with all his weight and Bucky stalks after him.

“Bucky, Bucky, Christ,” Sam yells, dancing away from him again with hands up, because what the hell else is he supposed to do when he can't tell how there Bucky is. “You okay, Bucky? We okay? We're okay,” Sam says, Bucky pacing him, but slower, and with a flicker of a worried look like he's just realizing how freaked out Sam is because what the fuck. Bucky closes Sam into the corner and Sam lets himself be herded, because if he's going to go like this, there's not a hell of a lot he can do about it at this point. Bucky wrestles them to the ground like Sam did the first day, and maybe it'd be a hug if Sam wasn't so rattled but nothing's been normal in months and this isn't any different.

Sam kneels next to Bucky warily, ready to push himself out of arm's reach if he has to, and what has Hydra done to them that they can't even trust each other anymore. Bucky rolls his head against the wall, face blank as ever but his eyes are sharp, watching Sam, and Sam's heart lurches wondering how there Bucky actually is.

“Sorry,” Bucky says, barely audible over Sam's ragged breathing, “they've got cameras and they wouldn't bring you otherwise.” And Sam can't help going rigid for all that Bucky doesn't bat an eye, because it's time, they're doing this. Sam scrambles for the medbag, because it's time, Jesus Christ it's happening and it's not just a nightmare this time. “Go through the motions,” Bucky says, listing against the wall but his voice is even. “Tell them you sedated me.”

Except when has anything ever been that easy, and maybe this is a nightmare because the door hisses before Bucky's even done talking. Sam doesn't even have the bag open and even Bucky goes tense.

Because the door opens and it's not just Rumlow now, it's him and all his backup dancers and they know something's up, gathered around the door but not willing to step over the threshold, wary of Bucky. Rumlow snaps his fingers at Sam from the doorway. “You're done. Get out here.”

“Go,” Bucky breathes. “Go,” he snaps when Sam doesn't move.

And it's—what the hell else is he supposed to do.

Sam's played by the rules, never skipped leg day and it's not fair, but it's not like he's going to get the knife out now. He stands and looks at Bucky, gut twisted and hesitating just long enough that he can hear a stun baton or a gun being unholstered. Just the threat of it, but it hangs over them.

They might not know. They didn't know about the bag. This might be salvageable.

The four steps across the cell are the longest he's ever taken, because they either know or they don't and it's going to be terrible either way.

Rumlow yanks him into the hallway, shoving Sam staggering into the little circle of Mercer and the rest. Rumlow takes a step towards him, Rollins flanking him, and Sam backs into Murphy. “Give me the bag,” Rumlow says, stalking him down the hall as Murphy steps aside and lets Sam back away like he's going to get anywhere. Giving him just enough rope to hang himself.

“Why?” Sam says, heart kicking in his throat, and that's exactly the wrong thing to say but he's not cut out for this shit and what does he think he's buying himself time for anyway.

“Because I fucking said so. Hand over the bag, Wilson,” Rumlow says, hand out, and time stretches thin.

Maybe in a perfect world Sam would have fought his way out of there, or made a different call, or just not been running on the Mall that morning.

But they're not in a perfect world, and Westfahl makes to grab the bag out of Sam's hands before he can make a decision.

Westfahl catches one handle while Sam keeps the other, and the whole thing splits down the seams in slow motion. The duct tape arcs out and catches Westfahl in the nose; the syringe shatters on the floor and Mercer dances away from it; Sam catches the utility knife in midair, scrambles for the keycard on the floor and somehow manages to come up running in the right direction.

“God _damnit_ , Westfahl,” Rumlow snarls as Sam skids back down the corridor, desperately trying to get the utility knife open. So much for the shoelaces, he'll have to find some other way to get over the moat of alligators. “How are you still even fucking _here_?”

Sam sprints like his life depends on it because it fucking does, Murphy's stupid vegan socks slipping on the floor.

He hopes they play Yakkity Sax at his funeral.

Or Westfahl’s, because Sam catches one glance back at Rumlow and Rollins tripping over Westfahl before he slaps the keycard on Bucky’s cell door, and then Westfahl goes bolting back into Murphy and Anders like _his_ ass is on fire. Rumlow buys Sam a precious second kicking Westfahl out of his way and ducking a wild swing, but Mercer’s unstoppable and Sam’s frozen like a deer in the headlights watching her stalk down the hallway past the comic relief. The cell door’s opening, but not fast enough and he can see he’s a dead man before she’s even in spitting distance.

Then Bucky’s out the door so fast Sam catches him with the knife accidentally, blood flicking across the far wall as Sam tries to get his balance, because what if Bucky really isn't as all there as he seems. Bucky grabs the knife from him and Sam's stomach falls, because this is how his nightmares end.

But it’s not him Bucky’s after and the Nazi comedy troupe catches on faster than Sam does, squawking like geese running into each other as Bucky stalks towards them. Except for Mercer, who’s five foot nothing and faces down Bucky like she could glare down a tank.

Which, yeah, she probably could.

Bucky goes through them like a scythe, crushing Mercer's throat in his metal hand before she can get the stun baton on him and tossing her back into Rollins, and they both go down in a tangle of limbs and electricity. Murphy and Westfahl dance away from them, Anders grimly flipping an alarm switch and everything really goes to hell in the sudden noise.

And Rumlow, that narcissistic, over confident bastard, turns his back on Sam because Bucky's the bigger threat. Rumlow stands in the middle of the hallway unholstering his gun, but it's not loaded and he doesn't take his eyes off Bucky cutting a path through Anders and Westfahl while he reaches for the ammo on his belt.

Sam tackles him from behind, knocking the gun down the hallway. Rumlow goes down with a grunt and a whoosh of breath, and Murphy rounds on them like he's going to do something about it before Bucky takes him down. He makes an awful sound. Sam doesn't see and doesn't care what happens to the rest, knuckles splitting against Rumlow's teeth as Rumlow kicks and tries to throw him.

It's not a nightmare, because the corridors are bright white in Sam's nightmares, not this flashing strobe of red alarm lights and it's Sam on the ground in his nightmares with Rumlow over him, the inverted image of this but there's blood everywhere anyway.

Rumlow's stopped moving by the time Sam registers Bucky standing over them. The hallway's quiet except for the blaring alarm and Sam's ragged breathing, and Sam's wasting precious seconds beating Rumlow's face in while the rest of them are already out on the floor. He lets Bucky haul him up, but he kicks the bastard in the side for good measure. Bucky gives Sam's shoulder a quick, familiar squeeze before Sam scoops up Rumlow's gun and ammo, then they're both sprinting down the corridor.

The halls are empty, and that can't be good. Bucky knows it too, hurrying them and checking behind him at the same time, picking up the pace like they're being chased by something Sam can't see. It's eerie shit, trying to keep up with Bucky in the bright light and echoing of the alarms, feeling like he's got something breathing down his neck because what if this is a nightmare and Bucky's trying to lose him.

Bucky takes point, jogging the direction of the parking garage, fast enough Sam can hardly keep up. He hesitates at intersections for Sam to catch up huffing and out of shape, Bucky swinging his head like he's almost forgotten if Sam's following or chasing, and Sam prays to God that Bucky just keeps it together long enough for them to get out of here.

Bucky gives him a last glance as he catches up, then they're off again, so close Sam's breath comes short as they round the last corner to the cars because God Almighty they might actually make it and Sam might see the sky again and get that steak.

Sam slips around the corner after Bucky and almost crashes out against him, Bucky standing dead still in the middle of the corridor. Sam's hand tightens around the gun and—

And—

And Christ Almighty it’s Steve and Sam could cry with relief, could practically throw himself into Steve’s arms now that the cavalry’s come. Whole and alive and looking for them after all this time, eight feet tall and shield in hand.

Bucky catches him up short, hand clamped hard on Sam’s arm, and it’s only then that Sam registers the gun coming up in Steve’s hand, aimed squarely between Bucky’s eyes. Steve’s eyes are dead as he should be, his head shaved and they’ve put him in a mirror of Bucky’s black uniform. Bucky shoves Sam behind him and the edge of tears threatens to turn into hysteric laughter, because this is how he’s going to die, trapped in underground Nazi summer camp as collateral damage of a murderbot slap fight.

Bucky kicks the gun out of Steve's hand and Sam ducks Steve's countering punch, fast enough it's barely visible and Jesus just let them all live through this because the stolen gun might as well be useless because he could never use it against Steve, even now. Bucky yanks Steve's shield away from him and punches him in one motion, Steve staggering just long enough for Bucky to throw the shield into a wall, stuck in the plaster.

This is why Hydra's been treating Bucky like he's disposable, because he's the faulty older model that's been on the fritz until someone thumps the static out. Steve doesn't even show a flicker of recognizing them, and Sam has a hot second of worrying that Hydra figured out how to hotwire his braindead corpse, but Steve had to have lived through it.

Has to. If anyone could, it's Steve, even in this waking nightmare.

They might as well be back on the highway in DC, Bucky going after Steve with the knife, but this time it's Bucky pulling his punches and Steve with the blank, flickering eyes. Bucky gets in two solid punches before Steve knocks the knife out of his hand, sending it skittering down the hall towards the parking garage along with the last shred of Sam's hope as Bucky takes a punch to the gut and staggers on his bad leg.

And like hell Sam's going to be able to get between the two of them and live through it, but he has to do something. Sam puts a foot on the wall and pulls Steve's shield out, Hydra paintjob and all, the star still visible as a shadow underneath with the harsh alarm lights flashing off it. He throws himself between them just as Bucky stumbles from another blow, getting the shield up between Bucky and Steve as Steve's fist comes down, and motherfucker it hurts, vibranium or no.

Steve snarls and rips the shield out of Sam's hands and Bucky tosses Sam to the side, rolling the other way as Steve's fist cracks concrete between them. Sam staggers to his feet with no gun, empty handed and useless. His ears ring and his head pounds from the blaring alarms and God if only this were a nightmare and not his life. Steve rounds on him dead faced and kicks the stolen gun away, shield in one hand and blood dripping down his other.

Eight feet tall and practically a wall of Nazis all by himself.

“Steve, God, Steve, it's me, it's Sam, it's Sam and Bucky,” Sam yelps, skittering back out of reach. Punched in the face by one brainwashed supersoldier is enough for a lifetime.

Steve picks him up one handed, shaking him like a bird dog, and that's when he sees Bucky in rictus on the floor. The tasers click just under the blare of the alarms, and if Rollins and Mercer are a little too gleefully focused on tasing Bucky, Rumlow is all Sam's and he goes cold sick with it. Steve yanks the keycard out of his hand and sends it clattering useless to the floor as Rumlow closes in.

Sam doesn't even get a last look at Bucky, Rumlow snapping his fingers at Steve for him to follow, and Jesus Christ that's why he's been doing it to Sam all this time because Steve follows like a dog, dragging Sam along whether he wants to or not. Rumlow's nose might be broken again, but Sam can't tell past his two black eyes and the rest of the damage and can't bring himself to be happy about because Sam's probably going to get the same and worse.

“That was a pretty good try, Wilson,” Rumlow says, and Sam’s unbearably grateful for Steve between them. “Almost had us worried for a minute.” Because if it was awful before, it’s going to be worse after this, Sam can hear it in his voice. They're dragging him back down to the cells, and he can't tell if he should be grateful he won't be going back to the evil little birdcage.

Probably not.

Steve tosses him in the cell ass over tea kettle and Sam tucks into it, shoulder sore from where Bucky threw him across the room. Steve just stands there in the doorway for a second and Sam pushes himself up warily, on his elbows like they just met after jogging, like this is the normalest shit in the world and if Rumlow weren't waiting just out of sight it would hardly be a nightmare.

Then Steve cocks his head like the world's scariest golden retriever and Sam’s heart stops for the second time. Steve takes a breath like he's going to say something with that little worried frown. Then Rumlow snaps something at him and Steve stiffens, and the door closes between them.

So that's that.

Key card and knife gone, right back where he started.

Sam lies on the floor and laughs himself sick, because now he has not just one but _two_ brainwashed murderbot boyfriends to rescue from squid Nazis, because why the everliving fuck not. Hydra’s buy one get one special.

Because fucking Rumlow never lied to him and Bucky told him, Sam was just too buried in grief to put it together. _Rogers and Barnes are both just as dead_. Fuck. Going on six months in Avengers HQ with Steve brainwashed down the hall the whole time.

As if it would have made any difference if he'd known earlier, except to torture himself over one more thing.

And goddamn Sam hates whoever is in charge of the Hydra barbershop, because not only do they enable Rumlow's stupid fucking rooster hair and leave Bucky with the sad sex hobo look, they've buzzed Steve's head and let him grow out the softbro beard, like he needs to look even more like a fucking Brooklyn hipster than he already does.

Did.

But at least he’s alive.

Sam stares at the ceiling and hangs onto that. Because now he might have two brainwashed white boys to rescue from squid Nazis, but he's also got two murderbot boyfriends on his side who mostly remember him on a good day.

Or at least one does, sometimes.

That's something.

If he can ever get them in the same place at the same time. If he lives that long.

Because seriously what the fuck. Sam's just one guy with no back up and no plan and no superpowers against all of Hydra. Sam Wilson, actual action hero.

Any day now—any second—Natasha and Hill are going to come crashing through a wall, guns blazing. They’re going to have his wings, and he’s going to sweep Bucky and Steve out of here. They’re going to have bruised, gentle recovery cuddling, and then Sam is going to sleep in a real bed for about ten thousand years.

While eating a steak.

It’ll be great.

 


	13. The 41st Floor

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lucky chapter 13 ;p

They leave him in there again just long enough to work out the worst possibilities. Make Bucky fuck him again. Make Steve fuck him. Cuff Bucky to the ceiling and make Steve cut him up. Put a gun to one of their heads and make Sam fuck the other.

He can probably live through it. How sane he'll be on the other side of it, he doesn't particularly want to think about, but he'll probably live through it.

It'll be fine, which is the same as fine.

He worries at it so long the possibilities start to go numb. Then hates himself for buying into this baroque torture because he's doing their jobs for them, thinking up increasingly horrible ways for it all to go.

* * *

Not worth thinking about. If it's anything like the other times, they'll leave him to rot for another couple of weeks and pull him out around Christmas for something even his sleep deprived nightmares can't cook up. Steve's alive, Bucky's alive, and they're going to get out of this. He has to hang onto that or he'll go crazy with it before they even put a hand on him.

But Jesus, what if Bucky and Steve just—can't die. What if they're stuck like this forever as long as Hydra wants to keep dragging them back from the dead, and Sam's going to get old watching them be tortured for the rest of his life. It's not the first time Steve's walked off multiple gunshot wounds, but how many more rounds of that is Sam going to live through.

* * *

Sam doesn't get a chance to dream up anything much more terrible than garden variety rape-torture before the door's opening again, bare hours later, and Sam's truly fucked up this time because Rollins shoves a cuffed, beaten bloody Bucky sprawling at Sam's feet, with Steve, Rumlow, Mercer and the rest filing in grimly after. Rumlow's barely cleaned the blood off his face and the rest are hardly better, Mercer's throat going a livid purple and Murphy's right eye swelling shut. The room is suddenly much smaller, clotted with the smell of blood and too many people, Sam pressed into the far corner with his ears ringing.

Bucky rolls to his back, snarling feral and he kicks at Rollins when he gets too close. If they left Sam to cool his heels, they clearly spent the whole three or four hours kicking the shit out of Bucky, cuts and welts barely visible through the blood streaked down his face and torso. Steve's got blood up to his elbows but otherwise not a mark on him, standing to the back and looking grim as he did when he first showed up on Sam's back step. Worried, Sam would think, if Steve weren't as blank as the white walls.

Sam reaches for Bucky, tries to get him to his knees, but Rumlow crosses the room to him and kicks Sam away, catching him in his bruised ribs. “He's fine,” Rumlow says, kicking Bucky in the gut.

Steve shifts against the wall, held in place with one of Mercer's little hands against his chest.

Rollins and Westfahl step in, hauling Bucky to his knees by his hair and throwing him face down, Rollins' boot on his back to keep him down.

“Man, the shit he's healed up from,” Rumlow says, sitting on his heels next to Sam to watch. “Helps having an in house seamstress, course,” he says, patting Sam's cheek half fond.

Mercer gives Steve a little push forward, like somebody's mother pushing them on stage for the school play, and that's exactly what this feels like, everyone going through the parts that have been written out for them. Steve kneels between Bucky's knees and hauls him up, Bucky's eyes closed tight and head tipped against the floor like he knows what's coming just as well as Sam does.

“You, though,” Rumlow says in Sam's ear, close enough Sam can feel the heat of him. He flicks open his little utility knife under Sam's chin, using the point of it to tip his chin up and Christ Sam should have slit his throat when he got the chance. “You're not going to heal up from shit. As soon as Rogers is done, you're getting your wings clipped, and then we'll see how far you get cut off at the knees. Or maybe ankles if I'm feeling generous.”

Sam closes his eyes, because this is his life, put here just to watch, for Riley, for Bucky, for Steve.

Rumlow sees, because of course he does. He leans in close, lips practically brushing Sam's ear like Steve used to do first thing in the morning. “You're going to watch every minute of it, Wilson, because they're both ours and nobody fights Hydra. And if you don't want to watch, you're going to be next.”

“Sorry, Sam,” Bucky says against the floor, so quiet Sam could think he'd imagined it, and God, he can't, he can't open his eyes this time because he already watched Steve die once and this is somehow worse with this audience, bright lit so it's all burned into Sam's eyelids like his nightmares.

Sam punches Rumlow in the nose before he can think about it, because what's it matter anymore. They'll never get out of this alive or sane, so what's it matter if he fights back or lets it happen except that if he fights back he can die with at least some of his dignity since that's all he's got left.

Rumlow gets knocked back on his ass with the knife spinning across the floor, and they're not fast enough to keep Sam from pinning him to the floor and getting a couple punches in, but that's all before Steve's hauling him up in a pinhold, kicking. Bucky's dazed on the floor, still half dressed but at least Sam saved him from that, for now.

Steve presses against his back, warm and solid and Sam's skin crawls trying to get away from him, because not this, not here. Rumlow spits blood on the floor as Rollins helps him up, face bloody and dark.

Rumlow punches him in the gut and Sam heaves with the pain, but he's got nothing in his stomach to puke on Rumlow, more's the pity. Steve makes an inarticulate noise and Sam doesn't want to think about it, Bucky trying to thrash himself to his feet until Rollins and Westfahl kick him prone again.

Then the lights dim and there's noise, like a car alarm down the block.

“Motherfucker,” Rumlow says to the ceiling, all of them gone wary tense like the first time they dragged Sam out to patch Bucky up. “Get him out there,” Rumlow snaps, and Steve drops Sam like a hot brick when Rumlow snaps his fingers. Westfahl and Mercer hurry Steve out of there, looking worried with Murphy and Anders on their heels. Sam drops to his hands and knees heaving on the floor, barely catching Steve's bewildered glance back over his shoulder.

Which is either very good or very bad for Sam, but mostly bad because it means he has to track down Steve again if they're going to make a break for it.

“Told you this was a bad idea,” Rollins says.

Rumlow spits blood on the floor at his feet. “Go get freezerburn's cell open and bitch me out later,” Rumlow says, and Rollins rolls his eyes but he does what he's told.

For a half second the only sound is the echoing alarms and Bucky's ragged breathing, and Sam thinks he's going to pass out as his vision tunnels down to the little utility knife in the corner. The gut punch and the panic attack blur together, Sam's hands shaky from the pain and exhaustion as he makes himself lunge for it before anything else can happen.

He comes up with the knife and brings it up into Rumlow's gut, holding him close, because that's how it's been. They stagger into the hallway as Rumlow tries to pull away and Sam takes more of his weight.

Close enough to kiss, close enough to see all the broken bones and bruises mirrored back at him in Rumlow's surprised eyes, like this isn't how Rumlow's romance novel ends either. It's too intimate, like fucking except Rumlow never fucked him face to face like this and what's it say about Sam that he's so nauseous worrying about Rollins without Rumlow that he can't even twist the knife in Rumlow's belly.

It's over faster than it should be, and quieter too. Rumlow folds to his knees as soon as Sam steps back, the front of his shirt and pants tacky with blood, slow and dark from a gut bleed. Rumlow lists against the corridor wall open-eyed and he's barely breathing as Sam goes through his pockets for his keycard and stun baton. Sam hesitates over him, because he should slit Rumlow's throat, but he can't make himself touch Rumlow any longer than he has to, heart beating too fast with the smell of cheap cigars, fratboy deodorant and blood all over him.

Sam stumbles back to Bucky and uncuffs him, and it makes him dizzy, that they were doing this not a handful of hours ago and maybe this is their new Groundhog Day, increasingly violent and baroque but never quite making it to the finish line.

Bucky yanks them away, spitting on Rumlow on their way out the door. And it's—they just did this, but now they're both covered in blood and all Sam's got is a stun baton and not a gun, as if that helped any last time.

They slip down the hall, Sam's vegan socks dark with blood marking their trail for Rollins, but it's not as though it matters. Bucky points them a different direction, not to the chair or the cars, and Sam just has to trust him because they have to get Steve and they have to get out of the straight shot of the corridor before they're shot like fish in a barrel.

And Jesus. Jesus Christ, Rumlow's not there when Sam glances back as they round the corner, and only Bucky or Steve could have lived through that, the amount of blood all over the floor and all over Sam. Bucky keeps him moving, and that's the only thing that tells Sam that this isn't an actual nightmare because Bucky's turned on him by now in his nightmares.

It's not fair and that's all Sam's mind can catch on as they round the corner, that it's been six months and it's not fair because why can't Rumlow just be dead after all this.

Whatever they sent Steve after can't be that much of a distraction, because they run into plenty of squid Nazis this time, boiling out of labs and offices like rats abandoning the sinking ship as the walls shake with distant explosions. They're not on lockdown this time, and if it means they meet more resistance this time it also means they've both got guns once they get the drop on one group and whatever's got Hydra freaked out on high alert has to be good for Sam and Bucky.

Has to, because Sam can't live in a world where Hydra is the lesser of two evils.

Sam and Bucky round the corner into a little troop of Nazis coming down the hall in full gear and facemasks, because why not. Bucky swings the gun up at them and they scatter, ducking for the cover of the side corridors.

Except. Christ. One of those Nazis is a black man, because one of those Nazis is Rhodes and the rest of the Nazis with him aren't Nazis, they're Wanda and another woman, pulling off helmets and yelling them down. Sam pushes Bucky's gun down, because Jesus Christ someone was coming for them after all.

“Colonel Rhodes,” Sam chokes, and almost swallows his tongue. Bucky puts the gun down and Sam staggers to meet them. They're real and they're here and they're actually going to get out of this for real. Rhodes catches Sam, the rest of them covering. “You know I ordered this pizza six months ago,” Sam says, because it's that or cry and now is not the time to fall apart, not this close.

“Yeah,” Rhodes laughs, grim, getting an arm under Sam's as he stumbles. Everything suddenly hurts more, like his body's just dropped the adrenaline that was keeping him numb and upright the last six months. “Yeah, sorry, we didn't know where to deliver it until you gave them a scare. Traffic from the city was rough.”

“Where's Barton and Nat?” Sam says, because they have to get Steve, because they have to get out of here before Sam loses it.

“I'm Barton. The other one,” the unfamiliar woman says. “Nat's looking for him,” she says, nodding at Bucky.

Wanda and Barton, the other one, watch Bucky warily, Rhodes propping Sam up. Bucky watches them back, the same wary look he gave Sam wearing Rumlow's jacket and Sam wonders not for the first time if Bucky's as all together as he seems. “Steve's here, we have to—“

“We know,” Rhodes says. He points them back down the way they'd come with a glance at Wanda, Barton the other one taking point.

Sam pulls against Rhodes' hold on him, gesturing the way he and Bucky had been heading. Bucky stands stock still at the intersection, fingering his stolen gun and eyeing Rhodes. “Then come on,” Sam says, trying to tug out of Rhodes' grip, “he has to be somewhere—“

“Wilson,” Rhodes says, too gentle, looking past him to Bucky. “He just shot Nat on our way in. He's gone, we tried.”

This is what it felt like, when Sam told Steve Bucky was the kind you stop. And maybe it's even true, but it can't be true, he can't just leave Steve to all this.

Sam staggers back towards Bucky, who takes his hand, and they're off.

“ _Damnit_ , Wilson, this is not in the plan,” Rhodes yells after him, but Bucky breaks with him and the rest follow.

Bucky takes point, but where ever he was taking them, Steve's not there. In one lab and another, and after all this Sam's going to die of a heart attack because he keeps seeing Rumlow in ever shadow and every group of Nazis they run across, and what if that's just the rest of his life, jumping at shadows. The walls shake and the ceilings dust them with plaster a couple times, the lights dimming again.

“Hill,” Rhodes says by way of explanation, but even he looks a little worried.

Bucky finally doubles them back down to the cells, to the chair, and the only way Sam can make himself keep walking back there is by keeping Rhodes and Wanda and Barton in his sight.

Sam sees her first, kneeling in a pile of corpses, trying to key open the hazard doors Sam always guessed led to the chair but never saw. She's small as Mercer and one day Sam's going to stop seeing them everywhere, but he breaks into a run anyway because it's Nat and she stands to meet him without shooting him in the face, which maybe he should have thought about first.

“Hey soldier,” Natasha smiles, and her teeth are a little bloody like Rumlow's but Sam could kiss her anyway. She's got her left arm in a makeshift sling of some dead man's belt, shot cleanly through the shoulder. “You here for the antique shopping too?”

Sam laughs, because it's that or cry, and she lets him give her a careful little hug before the rest catch up. God, she's solid and she's real and she doesn't have his wings but it doesn't matter because she's not dead. Nat squeezes him back one handed, giving him one of her faint real smiles before Bucky catches up and gives her a wary nod with the others close behind him.

She pops the lock, Sam and Bucky covering her as the doors swing wide, and there's Steve.

He lists in the chair, tracking them with his eyes as Sam and Nat burst in the door. He's gut shot, right hand pressed below his ribs with blood slicked all down his left leg and the chair, but his eyes are clear and his breathing's even as Sam staggers towards him, Steve not moving a muscle except to watch him.

Steve's in the chair. Mercer and two techs are on the floor, dead or close enough, throats and faces crushed. Westfahl's on the other side of the room where he's been thrown, not a mark on him except his neck twisted at the wrong angle. Steve turns his head to follow Sam and he's bleeding from his left ear, blinking absently.

Steve's in the chair and he doesn't react when Bucky crosses to him in two steps and rips the EKG pads off his chest.

Sam hesitates half a step behind, certain he doesn't want to hear the answer when he wills his voice steady. “Steve? You okay? You remember me, you remember Bucky and Sam?”

Steve looks up at him with clear, guileless blue eyes, and Sam catches Bucky's quick shake of the head before Steve's and wishes he hadn't asked.

Steve shakes his head slow and deliberate, like he had to think it over, like it might not be the right answer.

And it’s—Steve’s fine.

He’s going to be fine. Which is the same as fine. Bucky's come back from the same thing more than once, it's fine. A little head trauma never hurt anyone.

It’s fine.

Steve’s fine.

Bucky hauls Steve to his feet and for a half second it looks like someone's face is going to get punched in, Rhodes, Wanda and Natasha bracing behind them. Then Steve looks from Bucky to Sam and back, and Sam reaches out his hand.

Steve puts his hand in Sam's, big and warm. Bucky claps him on the shoulder and hands him a gun.

“Don't think that's such a good—“ Rhodes starts.

“Doesn't matter,” Barton, the other one, yells.

“Time to go,” Nat yells, and suddenly she's shot two Nazis dead in the hall and there's more coming.


	14. The World As It Is

They cut a path through the first wave and push forward against the second, because where do they have to go but up. The Nazis thin out when the lights dim and cut out under another explosion, and then it's time for heart stopping hide and seek in the dark. ****

This is the stuff of Sam's nightmares, Bucky towing Steve along by one hand and pushing Sam forward as Rhodes and Barton take point out the way they came. This'll be the fourth time Sam's gone out this way, and maybe this time he'll even make it all the way, though his gut doesn't quite believe it in the flashing red of the emergency lights.

Natasha and Wanda are terrifying together in the dark, moving in and out of sight even with Natasha's bloody shoulder, and then there's strangled sounds and corpses in their path. They'd be a whole new set of nightmares if Sam didn't already have plenty to spare.

“Need a pickup, Hill,” Rhodes yells into his honest to God walkie talkie as they run, and Christ they've gone low rent because it only crackles with faint static that must mean Hill's still out of range. They make it to the parking garage, empty except for Nat looking shocky leaned against the tire of a beat up jeep and Wanda putting pressure on her bloody shoulder.

Sam staggers to her, Bucky grabbing a little medbag out of the back of the jeep, and Christ will Sam ever get to stop seeing the people he loves torn up in front of him. But Nat just grabs a fistful of gauze from him and waves Sam away, gesturing to where Steve's swaying on his feet and going gray.

Bucky wrestles Steve to the ground while Rhodes and Barton the other one bar the main doors, sweeping the echo quiet garage for any stragglers. They could all pile into the little jeep, but that would mean at least a couple of them hanging off the sides and there's not enough of them in good enough shape to do that and still drive the damn thing. Rhodes and Barton cover them, radioing for Hill like it's the nineties and Sam wishes they'd brought tin cans with string instead because at least then they could have followed the string to find Hill.

“Thought we brought that for you,” Rhodes says, watching him pack Steve's bullet wound with gauze. The bullet needs to get fished out but there's no time even without Nazis rattling the barred doors to the rest of the complex.

“Yeah, well,” Sam says. “I got the spa treatment compared to these two.” Rhodes and Bucky share a look but don't say anything, and thank God for it because Sam's not sure he can keep it together if someone does. He can fall apart after they get the fuck out of here.

Hill saves him from having to think about it, screeching down the ramp and clipping a side mirror off one of the big black Hydra SUVs. Bucky hauls Steve and then Sam to their feet, Natasha up quicker than she has any right to be, arm slung over Wanda's shoulders.

“Shit,” Hill says, taking one look at them.

“Yeah,” Rhodes says, opening the car door. “Okay, plan B, Rogers in one, Barnes in the other so they can't—“ Rhodes stops and Sam turns to see what he's looking at.

Steve just stands there silent with Bucky beside him, and Sam realizes they're flanking him like Rumlow and Rollins and his skin crawls. “Okay,” Rhodes says. “Okay, back to plan A, you three with Hill and we'll decoy.”

Rhodes, Wanda and Nat pile into the other jeep just as the blocked doors start to give, Nat shooting to cover them as Bucky practically fireman carries Sam into the other car, leading Steve by the hand. Barton the other one slams the door behind them and Hill puts it into gear before Barton's even all the way in the car, the doors giving way as they peel out of there. The other car takes a sharp turn out of the ramp, Nat and Rhodes firing while Wanda drives.

Hill floors it with Barton the other one on point out the side, shooting out the tires of two big black SUVs that start up first. Rhodes, Wanda and Nat draw fire on the other side of HQ and Sam hopes they live through it.

Hill drives worse than Rollins and the jeep's got less suspension, Sam thrown against Steve and Bucky and wind whistling around them through old bullet holes. They're running on an even leaner budget than they used to, then, because the rattletrap's almost as old as Steve.

The road smoothes out suddenly, or maybe they actually pull onto a real road instead of bombed out greenspace, a few muffled explosions booming in the distance. Sam can't tell how far they've gotten, the valley cupping in all sound. He tips his head against the window to watch the trees go by, dark and indistinct under snow.

And God, he's forgotten what the stars look like. The sky's all he's dreamed about the last nightmarish six months and now he can't look at it, afraid he'll fall into it and drown. Sam clutches the side of the rattling jeep and doesn't look at it. No matter how bad he wants to drown in it.

Steve cuddles up to him in the sudden quiet and Sam shivers, because he can smell Rumlow on Steve and feel Steve's hands on him but he doesn't know how much of it Steve even remembers, let alone understands and it didn't even happen so it's not like there's any reason for his skin to crawl so badly. So Sam holds Steve's hand and pets his hair and thanks God that Bucky must understand, because he presses himself into the far corner of the jeep and Sam doesn't think he could handle both of them.

“What day is it?” Sam asks after an hour or so. Not sure he actually wants to know the answer, but not knowing won't change anything so he might as well.

Hill looks at him in the rearview, and he can see her thinking it over, whether it's kinder to tell him or not. Barton the other one gives her a look Sam can't read. “Two days after Christmas,” Hill says eventually, eyes back on the road.

So Sam missed his birthday, and Steve's birthday, and Thanksgiving. But he'll be home in time for his mother's birthday, and that's something. For a relative value of home, anyway.

“You can change, if you want,” Barton the other one says, turning to pass back a set of clothes for him and Bucky and an extra jacket for Steve. Sam just holds the neatly folded clothes and looks at her, doesn't even know what to say because Rumlow's blood on his clothes is starting to dry stiff but he just can't. She must see it on his face, because she puts up her hands and says, “Or not, not is okay too. You want a blanket? We've got blankets,” she says.

Sam takes one of those and doesn't think about that he's using it to put another layer between himself and Steve, because he can't take even the thought of undressing here in the dark with Steve and Bucky and a stranger.

* * *

They switch cars in polebarn somewhere south of Albany, Nat and Hill driving off to get rid of the jeeps while Barton the other one and Wanda hunt up an extra set of clothes for Steve in the hayloft. Rhodes starts tossing what gear they have into a battered minivan missing a hubcap, his boots crunching over cold gravel in the quiet. Sam shifts foot to foot on a piece of muddy plywood, holding his change of clothes in one hand and watching everyone else move around him with breath hanging in the cold air.

Bucky tugs Steve over to a far corner, sitting him against the wall with an arm around Steve's waist, their heads bent together. Sam can't hear what Bucky's saying to Steve and he's not sure he's meant to, so he hovers just out of reach, not sure what to do with himself because God he needs them but he can't make himself touch either of them yet.

Rhodes takes one look at Sam hesitating and drops what he's doing loading the rusting van. He pulls Sam along with him without putting a hand on him, and God bless him he tacks up a blanket across one corner of the barn and turns his back. By the time Sam's done struggling out of his blood-stiff clothes, there's a damp rag and a pair of shoes sitting next to his clothes on the gravel and he could almost cry because the shoes fit.

The rag is icy in the cold air and bloody by the time he's done with it, but it's good enough and he'll take it. He scrubs fingers through his hair, the biggest it's ever been, including that terrible highschool flat top, and maybe he can ask Rhodes to clip it down later because between the clothes and the hair and the teeth he looks like low rent Lenny Kravitz on meth and Steve's already got the hipster thing covered.

Rhodes gives him a once over when Sam steps out from behind the blanket. And even if his heart kicks once at the similarity with how Rumlow checked him out before trying to fuck him, Sam must pass inspection because Rhodes gestures for him to follow. Steve and Bucky are gone from their corner, but he can hear Wanda and Barton talking softly at them, so they can't be far.

Rhodes sits him down against the wall and puts a hot MRE in his lap, and that's it. Rhodes crouches next to him like Rumlow did and it's the maple sausage one, it doesn't even smell like real maple syrup and Sam chokes. And Christ what's he going to do if someone tries to feed him pancakes because he can't take the fake smell of it, pushing it away like it's on fire.

“I didn’t—I didn’t—“ Sam chokes, and he can’t get his breathing under control. He doesn’t even feel the shaking until Rhodes puts a hand on his shoulder, and then he can’t stop that either. “There were pancakes and I—and I—“

“Wilson,” Rhodes says.

“I drank their beer,” Sam confesses, his last shreds of control and dignity slip out of his hands and he’s crying in front of a superior officer like he hasn’t since Riley. There was someone coming for him after all, and he got pancakes and beer while Steve and Bucky were being tortured out of their minds and Sam helped them.

“Wilson, look at me,” Rhodes says like a slap across the face. Sam’s face is wet, the ugly kind of public crying and he wants to hide under a rock forever but that’s an order and Sam wants more than anything to have his dignity back. “None of it was your fault,” Rhodes says. He sounds so sure of it Sam almost believes him. “You got yourself, and Barnes, and Rogers through it. You break down if you need to, but you didn’t do anything wrong. You hear me?”

Sam breathes convulsively, trying and failing to get his crying under control. This is not how his romance novel ends, crying over shitty Army food in some abandoned barn.

“I said you hear me, sergeant?”

“I—yeah.” Sam gulps down one breath and another, scrubs a hand over his face. “Yessir. Yeah, I hear you, Colonel.”

Rhodes sits with him until his breathing's under control again, and then Rhodes disappears the maple MRE. Sam sits and rubs his eyes, because he's coming down off the adrenaline he's been living on the past six months, and the crash is going to be hell.

Is already hell.

Rhodes brings him a couple different MREs to pick from, and Sam grabs one at random because he knows he needs to eat, but making the choice is one more hurdle than he can manage at the moment.

Number six, beef with vegetables.

Not a steak, but pretty close, all things considered. It's exactly as shitty as he remembers it, but he forgot how to feel hungry somewhere in the last few months between the pancakes and the headaches. His gut still hurts where Rumlow punched him, or maybe where he's twisted up over the surreality of this, that he stabbed Rumlow in the gut but still feels like he has to look over his shoulder. Everything hurts, the gravel, his bones, his teeth, the buzzing dim light of the two bare lightbulbs, but he's out and it's real and it's not a nightmare because his nightmares never made it this far.

He's fine. He's going to be fine, which is the same as fine.

“Your mom knows you’re alive,” Rhodes says when he's done eating except for the waxy chocolate, and Sam’s throat closes up again because he’d been too scared to ask. “She's in Paris with Jessica and your nieces.”

Sam rubs a hand over his face and takes a deep breath, because he knows what's coming. “And Brittany.”

“There was a protest in DC,” Rhodes says without sugar coating it, and Sam closes his eyes. Because of all the fucked up shit Hydra did to him, they never lied to him, and isn't that the worst of all. “About a month after Insight went up and you disappeared.” When Sam was wallowing in self pity crying for their mother, before they'd even done anything to him. And Brittany was out there fighting back. “She was arrested, killed in police custody. We're not sure if Hydra was involved,” Rhodes says, but not like it's a consolation, because how could it be when it could have happened whether Hydra was in charge or not and God it must have killed their mother, both of them gone in the same month. Brittany always wanted to see Richard Wright's Paris.

“But her kids are okay,” Sam says, because after everything he still needs to get kicked in the gut by his own stupid hope.

“Yeah. They're in Paris with your mom and the Barton kids. That’s how Pepper got arrested, on human trafficking charges if you can believe it, getting everybody’s kids out of the country. Tony and Vision got grabbed trying to get her out of the Fridge.”

“The Fridge?”

“Prison for enhanceds,” Rhodes says with a shrug. “We’re working on it, but we think they're okay, they're too high profile to disappear.” Unlike you, he doesn’t say, but Sam can’t resent it because he wouldn’t wish it on anybody.

“Can I call my mom?” Sam asks his hands, ashamed of himself for how bad he needs it. Needs to talk to her before she sees him, needs her to know he's okay before she doesn't recognize him with his scruffy hair and his mouth full of broken teeth.

But mostly he just needs her to tell him he's going to be okay.

“Yeah. First thing when we get a secure connection,” Rhodes says. “You need anything else while we're waiting?”

“No. No, I'm okay,” Sam says, because he has to be.

* * *

Nat and Hill hike back a half hour later, and then it's time.

Bucky takes one look at Sam bracing himself for the crowded minivan and he bullies Sam into the back benchseat, putting himself between Sam and everyone else. Bucky makes Steve sit on the floor to Bucky's far side as everyone else piles in, Rhodes, Nat and Wanda crushed into the middle bench. Rhodes and Nat exchange looks but don't say anything, and then they're off.

If Sam maybe puts his face in his hands and cries himself into an exhausted sleep, no one says anything about it. He tries to keep it quiet because he doesn't think he can explain the crushing surreality of this, of not trusting that he won't just get dragged back even now, of being so selfishly wrapped up in his own disorientation that he can't even cry for Brittany yet.

He wakes up with Bucky's metal arm around him a couple hours later, startling awake as they rattle over the GWB. Bucky starts to lift his arm away but Sam puts a hand on his wrist to keep him where he is. Steve's asleep with his cheek pressed against Bucky's knee, as guilelessly peaceful as Bucky is grim, and yeah, out of all of them Bucky probably has the best idea of what kind of recovery comes next for all three of them.

* * *

They roll up to a rundown apartment building at around four in the morning, piling out with stiff joints and the smell of blood following them up the icy concrete steps. Barton the other one takes point up the rickety dark stairs, flipping the deadbolt on a fourth floor walkup as the rest of them stumble up behind her.

“You look like hell,” Clint says from the couch, and he looks terrible in the one yellow light in the apartment. There's a big mutt draped across his legs and Clint looks about how Sam feels, gut shot and exhausted.

“Same,” Nat says. She eases herself down to the kitchen table, Hill taking the medbag from Sam and going after her. There's a kitchenette along one wall and two bedrooms towards the back of the building, almost the same layout as Rumlow and Rollins' apartment and Sam shies away from both dark bedroom doors, letting everyone else filter around him.

Barton the other one crosses the apartment in two steps, making Clint hiss when she checks the bloody dressing around his chest. “Clint, you are an actual human disaster, I told you to stay in bed.”

“I had to keep an eye on your signal,” Clint says, wincing.

“Sorry I shot you again,” Bucky says to the dirty carpet.

Clint shrugs stiffly. “Happens.” Natasha gives him a pointed look, letting Hill peel back the bloody gauze of her own Hydra souvenir.

Bucky and Steve watch Natasha where Hill is patching her up, backs to the wall and looking to Sam for instructions. The three of them are so young and Sam just wants to lie down and cry. None of them are thirty yet and he feels so old but he hasn’t been through a tenth of what the three of them have. And yet here they are, Bucky and Steve both shadowing him like he can protect them from Nat or any of the rest of this, as if Sam has ever been able to protect anyone from anything.

The sky isn't even light when they start to settle even though it's getting on five in the morning, and Sam climbs out on the fire escape because the damp cold is more bearable than being trapped in the little apartment with too many people. The sun will be up in a couple hours, and then maybe Sam'll be able to sleep after he sees daylight again, maybe that'll be the thing that finally makes this escape feel real. He pulls his coat closer around himself, and if he can still smell Rumlow and blood and electricity on himself it's probably just his imagination.

He gets a half hour of peace before Nat taps on the window behind him, wrapped in her coat and clearly coming out after him one way or another. Steve and Bucky sit against the wall to one side of the window, trying to lean away from her and keep an eye on Sam at the same time, and it'd be funny if it wasn't heartbreaking and creepy as shit at the same time.

“You okay?” Natasha says when Sam waves her out. She settles down beside Sam on the snowy fire escape, stiff and arm tucked against her chest like a broken wing. She hands him a beer, and Sam doesn’t know what to do with it for a minute. It’s not cold, and when he takes a drink of it, it’s just tepid Yuengling, shitty cheap New York beer.

It’s not as good as that cold Bud Lite, and he hates himself for thinking it.

Sam can hear everyone else in the apartment shuffling around, Steve and Bucky huddled together close enough to the window he can hear them breathe. It’s not safe being out in the open like this, with Insight hanging over them, but the apartment is too claustrophobic even without eight other adults and a dog. And if Sam’s conscious mind knows he’s safe with all of them, well, his adrenal system hasn’t quite gotten the memo yet, on edge in the tiny crowded space. Especially with Steve and Bucky pressing too close to him, for all that they act like lost puppies trailing him. It’s selfish and stupid to climb out here on the fire escape, but no more selfish than anything else he’s done to get here. Bed-Stuy stinks like garbage even in the cold and he just wants to go home to his mother.

“No,” Sam sighs after a while, and it’s a relief finally saying it out loud, because he hasn’t been okay for a long time and he’s finally safe enough he can say so. He'll be fine one day, but he's not right now and he's probably not going to be for a while.

Natasha makes a noncommittal noise, leaving the door open to talk or not and Sam loves her for it. So this isn't how Sam's romance novel ends, and there's no couch-breaking sex, and barely enough floorspace for them to all crash, let alone beds. But they’re all alive, relatively speaking, and that’s something.

“I could use a steak, though,” Sam says after a while. And a dentist and a haircut, but those can wait until he's finally gotten that damn steak.

Natasha laughs, short and real, loud enough to startle the pigeons on the next building over. “That we can manage,” she says. “Barton’s bed and breakfast does a great steak and eggs.” Sam clinks his bottle against Natasha's and leans back against the window frame.

The beer’s okay, and they’re all alive, and that’s something.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you everyone who took a chance on this garbage barge and stuck it out with me, all your comments have meant a lot <3 <3 <3
> 
> I put together a list of other writers' Sam POV fics that helped me figure out my Sam POV voice [on tumblr here](http://a-social-construct.tumblr.com/post/126705220716/a-couple-of-folks-have-mentioned-in-the-comments), and [this](http://a-social-construct.tumblr.com/post/126435517226/build-a-better-worlds-pretty-dark-atm-and-i-just) is a longer version of the consensual happy sex in chapter 8.
> 
> thanks again for reading, and I love everyone in this dumpster.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Numb (Art)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4496757) by [all_the_damned (All_the_damned_vampires)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/All_the_damned_vampires/pseuds/all_the_damned)




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